WILD SEED
group exhibition
February 2 - February 11, 2018
Green Gallery. New Haven, CT
Portalscreen is a double-sided painting that embodies what Rooney calls, 'improvisational architecture': structures that may be temporarily installed within a space to change how one moves and behaves within it. As installed here— centrally within the gallery—Portalscreen serves as a dividing structure, demarcating a room within a room. As such, the painted screen may be looked at or looked through, experienced frontally or from both sides as one walks around it. Within this double interior, the smaller paintings directly reference the screen's cut out shapes and materiality.
In both the screen and the wall paintings, Rooney uses plaster as a primer—creating a highly absorbent, matte surface—and uses house paint to cover that surface—creating a waxy, pastel quality. In the case of the screen, Rooney embeds the tiles with translucent Depression glass inherited from her grandmother to counter the opacity of the plaster. She chose these materials for their associations with home—construction materials used to physically build a space, and domestic materials/processes used when inhabiting it. Aloof in the space is a hollow, freestanding yet soft form, which acts as the sole inhabitant in the otherwise spare space.
