kim.sobel

Stanley Rosen: Alligators & Objects April 19 - May 24, 2025

Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects
208 Forsyth Street, NYC, 10002
[email protected]
917-861-7312
Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12:00-6:00 pm or by appointment

One especially quixotic body of work by Rosen is a group of sculptures from the mid 70s featuring images of alligators. In response to this object, the sculptor states:

I don’t like alligators.
Alligators are single minded killers.
I was trying to connect with primordial visions.
When living in the outskirts of Florence on sabbatical the edges of the property were held by masonry walls and had small lizards sunning. In order to get into the village I’d have to pass by these lizards at eye level. It was unpleasant passing them.
Modeling is not my forte. So, skin and clay, the skinness of clay doesn’t work for me. So I was searching for some other way to use the ceramic surfaces.
What happened was I casually observed a coconut chip and it was there with the outer shell that the alligator surface merged. The two surfaces fit to the way I build ceramic surfaces.
Later when visiting the Natural Museum of History I saw in the displays the primordial forms I really wanted. I had models and photographs of alligators and not other primordial forms. The substitution of the alligator left something not gratified. It’s a bad substitute.


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