Through the Glass

Accession Number
2010/1.208

Title
Through the Glass

Artist(s)
Heather Rowe

Object Creation Date
2008

Medium & Support
chiffon, wood, mirror, wallpaper, fur

Dimensions
70 in. x 78 in. x 32 in. ( 177.8 cm x 198.12 cm x 81.28 cm )

Credit Line
Museum Purchase

Subject matter
Heather Rowe's art sits precariously at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, and installation, and her hybrid, fragmentary constructions derive their aesthetic frisson from her (or their) refusal to adhere to the norms of any one discipline. The sense of the work as neither one thing nor another is heightened by an attention to transitional spaces: corridors, stud-walls, windows and doorways. Interior and exterior space collapse into one another as the raw materials of construction - modular units of drywall, lumber, glass, and metal - are combined with more decorative elements. Interstitial spaces reveal swatches of carpet or wallpaper, while shards of mirror incorporate the surrounding space in a fragmented patchwork of reflections.
Although keenly aware of such predecessors as Bruce Nauman's corridor installations, Robert Smithson's mirror displacements, and Gordon Matta-Clark's building cuts, Rowe's work combines formal and conceptual rigor with a psychological ambivalence and narrative tension in a manner both highly original and thoroughly contemporary.

Primary Object Classification
Mixed Media

Primary Object Type
assemblage

Rights
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Keywords
assemblages (sculpture)
looking glasses
wood (plant material)

& Author Notes

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