Libby Rosa’s latest solo exhibition “Bell Out of Order Please Knock” at Bertrand Productions, is an immersive installation of new paintings and sculptures that call on the visual world of American childhood tinged with grotesque witchery and fantastic escapes. Rosa explores the concepts of control and transformation through her invented symbols, characters, and places.
Rosa has transformed the gallery's architecture by adding sheetrock walls containing porous channels. These lead to other worlds through her embedded paintings and cutouts.
The theme of the exhibition revolves around how the desire to attain an object or phenomenon can drive us to act in ways that are not typical of our character. A significant sculpture in the exhibit is a handheld mirror called "Bewitched" that has been magnified. Rosa has painted this object several times before, but it has never been seen in three dimensions until now. The mirror is shattered and covered in broken glass that she collected from her car after it was vandalized.
Rosa's hanging kinetic sculptures, influenced by fly fishing bait, flick and descend just above the viewer's head. The insect-like forms both lure and frighten the viewer with their materiality and motion.
The exhibition also features a painting titled "Attract," which shows a large flower just out of reach of the bee bait sculpture “Flick”. Another painting titled “Shedding” features Rosa's Witch character, who debuted in her solo exhibition at Blah Blah in June. It makes an appearance half-hidden behind the fiery wall cutout. The largest of Rosa's new paintings, "Bell of Order Please Knock," invokes the hallucinatory magic of "The Wizard of Oz," which is referenced in the exhibition title. It depicts a landscape at sunset with a figure on fire at its center.
Libby Rosa (b. 1993, Pittsburgh, PA) is an artist, curator, and teacher working in Philadelphia, PA. She received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin - Madison (2015) and her MFA from Cornell University (2019). She has been featured in Artblog, David Zwirner’s Platform feature interview: One Day, New American Paintings: Issue # 141, Maake Magazine: Artist-run Interview, and Inertia: Studio Visit and Interview. She had a solo exhibition at Blah Blah (PA) in June 2023 and participated in a two-person exhibition at SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC) in 2022. She has exhibited in national institutional and gallery group shows at Hicks Art Center (PA), 215 | 610 Contemporary (PA), Pilot Projects (PA), Safe Gallery (NY), and Marquee Projects (NY). Rosa has attended residencies at Tongue River Residency in Dayton, WY (2023), and VCU (SSP, 2015) in Richmond, VA. She founded Peep Projects, a project/gallery space in North Philadelphia.
Bertrand Productions is invested in developing opportunities for artists who create contemporary thought provoking works of art. BP exhibits emerging and mid-career artists through regular exhibitions in our physical gallery in Philadelphia, PA USA as well as through participation in prominent national fairs coupled with scheduled virtual releases. BP is dedicated to working side-by-side with its represented artists to expose their works to a broader audience while sharing strategic advise to assist in each individual's unique path.