The Skirt
Threshold – Adam Liam Rose

September 15 - December 9, 2018
Opening: September 15 6-9 pm

Adam Liam Rose's Threshold is an installation of objects and a tunnel constructed of collapsible frames. While site-specific, the work is built as a film set in flux, with the idea that it may operate in another context. The installation turns the gallery’s entryway into an underground “safe” space or shelter, continuing the artist’s exploration of physical, economic, and social accessibility within space, and pointing to invisible systems that create limited access. The work recalls Israeli bomb shelters, convict escape tunnels, smuggler routes, brutalist bunkers from WWII, and catacombs. As the architecture of the gallery does not allow for indiscriminate entry, Rose is interested in highlighting the failures of infrastructure and of the language of inclusion within art spaces and other sites of public exchange. While marking a ceremonial transition of the body from the street into the “sacred” space of the gallery, the threshold in this installation refers to a line of access, a point of entry, and to a point of no return. In this way, the work alludes to the precipice between life and death.

In the case of a natural disaster or nuclear explosion, whose bodies are most protected? In what ways do communities deal with these dangers, and in what ways does culture relegate them to the imaginary, the screen, and the immaterial? How does one's relationship to a given environment transform in the physical body versus the screen? What dangers are perceived? What spaces, if any, are safe?

Adam Liam Rose will discuss Threshold at Review Panel, Brooklyn Public Library Nov 13, 2018

Adam Liam Rose (b. 1990) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, photography, video and installation.  Born in Jerusalem and raised mostly in the United States, his works investigate the aesthetic systems of power embedded within architecture. Rose has exhibited at museums and institutions including the Jewish Museum (New York, NY), the Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL), Marinaro Gallery (New York, NY), Mana Contemporary (Chicago, IL), Sullivan Galleries (Chicago, IL) the Pfizer Building (New York, NY) and others.  He was awarded residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE), Ox-Bow School of Art (Saugatuck, MI), A-Z West: Institute of Investigative Living (Joshua Tree, CA), the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) and the Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Residency (Chicago, IL).  In 2018 Rose acted as a Fellow within the Art & Law Program (New York, NY), he received an Artis Contemporary Residency Grant, and will be a participant in the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ AIM Program.  Rose received his BFA in Fiber & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago ('12) and an MFA in Sculpture from Columbia University School of the Arts (‘17).  He Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.