Shop
Em Rooney, Lydia, 2018
UV print on aluminum, laser cut book, wire
8 ¾ x 11 ⅜ inches
Edition No. 25
NADA is pleased to present artist Em Rooney's limited edition artwork series—an edition of twenty five—for Friends of NADA, 2018 season.
This variable edition was made by laser-cutting a shape out of a series of found books, and inserting a UV photographic print on aluminum into each book. The laser-cut design is a combination of a cursive ‘L’ and rectangular shape to nest the photograph; and the muse in the photograph is artist, dancer, and close friend of Rooney's, Lydia Okrent. Bringing together these three elements—the found book, the photograph, and the negative space of the book— Rooney creates a striking, contemplative object that amplifies the deep intimacy of the orange-hued photograph, and speaks directly to her bodies of work exhibited in Being: New Photography 2018 at MOMA.
Em Rooney’s multimedia practice is anchored in a study of film, photography, and the material indices of these seemingly ephemeral, auratic genres. In the artist’s earlier work, analog methods of photography were paired with sculptural framing devices. Using steel brackets, leaded crystal enclosures, pewter embellishments, and other heavy, industrial materials that engage tactility and imply a substantive weight to their contents, these works reinforce the photographic image’s material presence, as pictures grow increasingly untethered from authorship and origin in the digital era. Rooney’s images focus on the experiences of women and girls, her style deliberately pedestrian yet narratively opaque, indicating everyday mystery. As Rooney’s sculptural objects have increased in scale in recent years, so have they developed a formal autonomy from photography, while maintaining a conceptual link to film: costume design, filmic ephemera, and the portrayal of women onscreen inform the artist’s structural and material techniques, many of which are improvised in her studio and original to her practice. Based on botanical forms, or, most recently, the eclosion cycle of butterflies, Rooney’s sculpture continues to allude to the dichotomy between seen and unseen, as it is uniquely experienced by women.
Em Rooney (b. 1983) lives and works between Canaan, CT and New York, NY, and is represented by NADA Member Gallery Derosia in New York.