Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped is the artist’s first major museum survey and chronicles over twenty years of her work in ceramics. The exhibition features more than 120 of Rosen’s most influential and dynamic works, never before exhibited in her home base of Northern California. Included are both early and recent ceramic sculptures that range from the diminutive to the monumental, as well as largescale works on paper that mirror the trajectory of her sculptural practice.
Raised in Brooklyn by a working-class Jewish family, Rosen’s process—grounded in resourcefulness, endurance, and a strong work ethic—can be traced to her upbringing. Drawing from the ethos that everything broken can always be fixed or re-used, Rosen embraces the impulse to rescue or resurrect broken ceramic fragments. She sees both her studio and the kiln as spaces of invention, where process and chance are equally essential elements in the formation of her art.
For over two decades, Rosen has interrogated the medium of ceramics in a contemporary art context. Formally trained in ceramics, yet heavily influenced by painterly gesture, Rosen has expanded her practice to include conceptually-driven sculptural forms. Composed using laborious, additive processes, her works push the medium beyond spectacle and into conversations about contemporary painting, feminist theory, endurance-based performance, and conceptual art.
Annabeth Rosen is a pioneer in the field of contemporary ceramics, bringing fluidity to the genre and its discourse with contemporary art. Within the genre’s trajectory, the artist functions as an important link between such artist as Lynda Benglis, Mary Heilmann, Jun Kaneko, Peter Voulkos, as well as a new generation of artists working in the medium.
