Six of One by Leah Rosenberg

On view from January 20, 2012 to February 29, 2012; reception date: January 20, 2012 from 6-9PM

You can view the pieces from the show here.

Rosenberg makes paintings and paint-based sculptures embedded with the time of their making. This time, encoded as moments, days, and weeks, are made visible in the accretion of layers of paint, like geological strata visible only when the landscape is cut-away. The addition of layers requires the selection of color, a decision both personal and informed by everyday experience, mixing the internal and intimate with the world of received images and external encounters. The layers come to signify a pile –up of experiences and memories; some are lost, but many fragments remain. Sometimes the layers transcend two dimensions and become sculptural, shedding the framework of the canvas or wall mount.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other is an idiom used to indicate equivalence. It is two ways of saying the same thing, a reply to an inquiry that solicits an evaluation between two choices. A statement most significant at a time where one makes these decisions based on a set of new resolutions. This more recent body of work, SIX OF ONE, being exhibited at Rare Device, refers to three pairs of paintings as a departure point for site-specific interventions throughout the shop. The installation in the front window is based on the sculpture in the back gallery, which is a 3 dimensional excerpt from a pair of paintings. A painting, in a painting, on a painting. And on your way out, you peruse the delicious merchandise the shop offers. You might likely come across a set of striped plates that you feel you might need to have one of, or maybe six.

About Leah Rosenberg
Rosenberg received her MFA in 2008 from the California College of the Arts and her BFA in Visual Arts from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2003. She is painter, sculptor, and cake-maker whose bodies of work combine systems of accumulation, elements of layering, and color to record how our experiences, emotions, and memories build up over time. She is currently employed as the head pastry chef at the Blue Bottle Coffee rooftop garden café at SFMOMA, creating desserts based on artworks in the museum’s rotating exhibitions and permanent collection.

About Rare Device:
Rare Device is a store and gallery that features functional experiments and original ideas in art, design, craft and fabrication. Owner Giselle Gyalzen constantly seeks out objects that are beautiful, evocative, well constructed and thoughtful. We are pleased to bring to our San Francisco store an ever-growing roster of local, national and international artists and designers for a truly "rare" experience.

Rare Device (raredevice.net) is located at 1845 Market Street between Valencia and Guerrero Streets. Store/gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11am to 7pm and Sunday noon to 6 pm.

For more information contact: Giselle Gyalzen at info@raredevice.net or 415-863-3969