Two Artists' Dreams and Nightmares on Display at Follow Your Art
Alisa Rodny, left, and Alexandra Rozenman
This month, Follow Your Art is hosting the gallery show “Contemplations: Artists Against War.” The show features two local artists, Alexandra Rozenman and Alisa Rodny. Both artists were born in Moscow, and met through the Russian-Jewish art community in Boston. This is the second show these two artists have done together.
In this show, Rozenman presents oil paintings and ink drawings, while Rodny shows mixed-media pieces. Throughout the exhibit the two artists’ pieces are placed beside one another, highlighting both the contrast between the two approaches and the similarities of theme.
Rozenman described her approach as “theatrical,” and her paintings “combine the uncombinable” into surreal scenes, contrasting ordinary objects and rooms with strange creatures and landscapes.
"Orange Moon" by Alexandra Rozenman
In one painting, "Orange Moon," an archway in an ordinary room opens out onto an ocean, and a strange creature - possibly menacing, or maybe just an element of a dream - hovers above, holding an orange moon. A mirror on the wall reflects ordinary furniture and wall hangings, contrasting with the surreality of the flooded room. Objects that could be either oars or kitchen spoons lean against the wall, inviting the viewer to consider which parts of the painting represent reality and which represent fantasy.
To create her paintings, Rozenman combines characters and ideas from sketches she’s done to tell a story, although she emphasized that the story is never finished; it’s up to the viewer to ultimately determine the meaning.
"Trying New Wings On" by Alexandra Rozenman
In creating her painting "Trying New Wings On", Rozenman described how she first envisioned the characters on a boat, then added the wings as she meditated on the visual relationship between sails and wings. There is a stark divide between dark and light in this painting: the left side seems to be a deck or patio in the daytime, while the right side seems to be a lake or sea at night. The figures in each half mirror one another, with similar elements but not exactly the same, and the yellow and blue flowers on the right side reflect that same dark-light divide.
"Colossus Chicken Defender of the Cities" by Alisa Rodny
Where Rozenman's pieces present dreamscapes where light and dark are mostly in balance, Rodny's pieces display nightmares more prominently, with monstrous figures inhabiting dark landscapes.
Rodny’s mixed-media pieces are made from items she finds on Ebay, or that friends bring to her in bins, or even parts of an old piano someone found in a basement. She also uses a Xerox transfer technique to turn photographs she has taken into the basis for some of her pieces.
One piece, called “Colossus Chicken Defender of the Cities” was inspired by the Ancient Greek Colossus of Rhodes, and “because I love chickens,” Rodny said. She described how, “when things in society started feeling unsettled,” she created this chicken to offer protection to her loved ones just as the ancient Colossus did. The shadowy city in the background is from her childhood memories of Moscow. And while the outline of the chicken is initially frightening, with its batlike wings and enormous size, its expression is familiar and oddly comforting.
"Who are you? I am the Wolf" by Alisa Rodny
Another piece, “Who are you? I am the wolf,” comes from a nightmare Rodny remembers from childhood, where a frightening figure with a mushroom head entered her room. For this painting, she combined the nightmare figure with the image of a wolf that resembles illustrations of wolves from Russian folk tales. The Xerox transfer technique creates menacing shadows on the piece, and the scratched-on outlines of the wolf's claws and the text of the piece's title in Russian give it a rough quality. Rodny finished this piece shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and described how she found entering the “creepy, scary space” of the nightmare to be comforting in a dark time.
The contrast between Rozenman's dreamscapes and Rodny's nightmares, and the way light and dark are used throughout, invites the viewer to use them as a jumping-off point for their own imagination and dreamscapes. Taken in the context of recent world events, especially the current war in Ukraine, they provide a means of exploring both dark thoughts and feelings and more hopeful dreams.
“Contemplations: Artists Against War” will be on display at Follow Your Art through September 28th. The Gallery is open to the public Monday-Friday from 10am to 6pm and Saturday from 10am to 1pm.
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