STATEMENT
Though based in New York City, I gather imagery as well from the months each year I spend in Europe. I am attracted to the crumbling facades of gothic architecture, bearing the weight of time, and its gargoyle or grotesque details. Though newer, 19th century New York buildings are aged enough to tell their own stories and mingle among their more ancient European counterparts in my compositions. The architecture of a place bears its own history, of its time and place when constructed. A building is also the witness of subsequent periods from those who have lived their lives within to those who have briefly passed through its walls. For me, though inorganic, buildings contain remnants of a human touch.
I became a book artist after years as a printmaker, seeing it as a natural extension of the thought process involved in formulating a related series of prints. With a book, I could explore the world that hovers between the flat surface and three-dimensional objects. I have moved from years printing lithography and relief to experimentation with the digital print, from scanning in my hand drawn images to manipulating objects on the scanner and in Photoshop. I have often played with the book as object, moving it into the sculptural. Whether it’s a print or book, the work becomes a unified whole as I employ architectural details and spaces I encounter wherever I have been.
BIOGRAPHY
Maddy Rosenberg is a Brooklyn native and, though still based in New York, has spent the good part of her career living and developing projects internationally. Her studio work spans many media, including oil painting, artist’s books, printmaking, drawing, animation, toy theater and installation. She was the American artist in a joint Turkish/German project sponsored by the US Consulate in Munich that included an award-winning exhibition at the end of a six-week residency. A solo exhibition at Hudson Park Library in New York City inaugurated their artist’s book programming.
Rosenberg maintains an active international curatorial as well as exhibition career. She approaches curating as an extension of her art practice. In September 2009, Rosenberg founded CENTRAL BOOKING, her multi-disciplinary curatorial project focusing on artist’s books and exhibitions on art & science.
Most recent exhibitions include the Sandstone Steps at Kirkcudbright Galleries in Scotland, for the collaboration with Roncadora Press around the Corsehill sandstone and stone carvers from Scotland used for the Million Dollar Staircase in the New York State Capitol; and On the Waterfront: View from the Coast (Line) collaboration with the New-York Historical Society on the ecosystems of the Brooklyn harbor. Additionally, Rosenberg’s international printmaking multi-venue curatorial project, New York/Paris DIALOGUE Paris/New York received a National Endowment for the Arts grant.
In 2007, Baylor University acquired fifteen of Rosenberg’s artist’s books to begin the Book Arts Collection. Other public collections include MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, Fogg Museum, Yale University, Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Tate Britain and National Galleries of Scotland: Modern Two. Bibliography includes BBC, Hyperallergic, Art Spiel, Art and Métiers, Haberarts, and Art Review.
Rosenberg earned a BFA from Cornell University and her MFA from Bard College.
Maddy Rosenberg’s Website
