Rose Stern

Emotion, sentiment, sensation"” - these are the invisible currents that animate our lives, connecting us to lovers, to strangers, to physical spaces, to our own bodies, and to objects of all kinds. In my work I attempt to investigate the emotional cores of surprising or unusual relationships by stripping away superfluous details and foregrounding moments of connections or repulsion. I rely upon my own visceral, intuitive sense of linkage to uncover connections that lie just beneath conscious understanding. As a result, the relationships I portray can be disturbing, whimsical, romantic, or puzzling. Although I have used a wide variety of materials and processes, my methodology is consistent: attracted to a particular pairing of objects or a specific theme, I focus on a moment of intense sensation or feeling. The objects and bodies in my work are frozen, seemingly inert, but they are never static; rather, they vibrate with raw feeling, the energy supplied by a connection or the longing for connections.