The Eternal Return | Stephanie Rose Portraits will present 23 stunning portraits of distinguished poets, novelists, art critics, filmmakers, photographers, performers, art collectors, and philanthropists.
Best known for her large-scale, painterly abstractions, Rose began painting a series of remarkable portraits in 1996. To set the stage, the exhibition will include several of Rose’s abstract works with chairs as central subjects that will reveal the deep relationship between her abstractions and portraits. Rose’s sitters are classically rendered with subjects surrounded by theatrical scenes of invented imagery, hallmarks of the artist’s style. Through her emphasis on the gaze, the portraits directly engage the audience. According to Rose, “The painting serves as an envoy to the viewer, an induction to reverie and contemplation and wonder.” Her works also anticipate the “viewer’s expectation of gaining insight into meaning in a work of art; the real significance of which is that it is one of the ways that people reflect on their own lives.”
Stephanie Rose, a resident of Hudson, New York, and a graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York, has a 39-year exhibition history, which includes twenty-two solo exhibitions in New York at The Dactyl Foundation, E.M. Donahue Gallery, and Getler/Pall Gallery, and elsewhere at Apel Galeri, Istanbul, Turkey, Moss/Chumley Gallery in Dallas, and One Illinois Exhibition Space, Chicago.
Rose’s work is represented internationally in numerous public collections including the Neuberger Museum of Art, The Denver Art Museum, The Tang Museum, Skidmore College, among others. She has received several awards for her work: the U.S. Consul General Istanbul, Turkey Invitational Travel Grant; the New School for Social Research Faculty Development Fund Grant; the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant. Rose has also held teaching positions at Parsons School of Design, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, State University of New York at Buffalo, and Pratt Institute.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Elizabeth C. Baker, Editor-In-Chief at Art in America from 1974 to 2008 and currently Editor-At-Large; Carter Ratcliff, author, poet, art critic and Contributing Editor at Art in America; the distinguished art historian James K. Kettlewell, Curator Emeritus, The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, and Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, Skidmore College; and with a foreword by the Albany Institute’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Tammis K. Groft, who also organized the exhibition.
