Barbara Rosenthal

STATEMENT
​My work is a manifestation of my soul and psyche. Soul connects me to the universe, psyche to inner self: to DNA plus physical and mental experience. The work connects me to you.

“When ideas plurp themselves into consciousness, I write them into journals, and some force me to produce them. If they don’t like how I’m making them, they pilot me to change them (and, often, to spend a lot of money). Eventually, they let me know they are done with me and finished, although with the caveat that they may return at any time for a complete overhaul.

“Then the next stage is that they nag to be described. And taunt me to show them around. And guess what they mean. Every minute, life throws obstacles and horrors in my path. But, while tip-toeing through each day’s misadventures, sometimes a picture is captured, a phrase immaterializes, or another idea comes.”

BIOGRAPHY
A native New Yorker who has lived in the Westbeth Arts Complex for 22 years, Barbara Rosenthal is a prolific, idiosyncratic Media and Performance artist and writer, referred to as “Media Poet” by The Village Voice in the 1980s, and by Berlin Art Link in 2013 as “ever-evolving Old Master of New Media.” Her over 50 image-text bookworks are in the collections of MoMA, The Whitney, The Tate, Berlin Kunstbibliotek, Artpool Budapest and her 130 videos have been screened in NYC at The Kitchen, Anthology Film Archives, DCTV and the Film-makers CoOp, etc; upstate in Rochester, Rosendale, Buffalo, erc, at other American locations such as The New Media Film Festival in LA; and abroad in China, Russia, CZ, Australia, UK, Germany, Finland, etc. She has taught Photography at Parsons and SVA, Writing at CUNY/Staten Island and Video at Manhattanville College. Her extensive archive has been acquired by CUNY, The City University of New York. Her major conceptual focus is on human and personal identity and its relationship to both its intimate and vast surroundings, which she expresses in prints, books, photos, video, audio, performance, and NFTs. One major body of work (1982-present) is HOMO FUTURUS, a term she has recently trademarked.

Barbara Rosenthal’s Website