Unfolding Roads
Alexandra Rozenman + Nora Valdez
February 3–28, 2021
First Friday Art Relay: https://youtu.be/7zdsN1RNS04
Virtual Reception: Sunday, February 21, 2021, 3PM
Unfolding Roads features painting and collage by Alexandra Rozenman and sculpture and drawing by Nora Valdez. The artists have traveled through time and across continents—Rozenman is originally from the Soviet Union and Valdez from Argentina. Their respective journeys and powerful artistic visions cross paths here in SoWa. The works in this exhibition are inspired by the arduous road that immigrants travel and the related search for belonging, rootedness, and home.
Alexandra Rozenman
Image: Thinking One Year Back (detail)
Alexandra Rozenman’s narrative about identity, search for belonging and journeying to a foreign land forms the core of her work. She says, “my approach to beauty and wonder came with me from Russia and keeps playing a big role in my work. I am always working with it or against it.” Her paintings invite viewers into her world of images, symbols, historical events, and the lives of famous artists and their well-known works. While forced to work on a smaller scale during the pandemic, Rozenman began exploring collage with ink and watercolor. She describes this process: “My thoughts materialized into shapes, shapes into images and images into stories.” Together, these two bodies of work illuminate Rozenman’s expansive vision. She shows us how we are all part of a larger story.
Rozenman was born in Moscow, USSR and emigrated to the U.S. in 1989. She was classically trained in the Soviet art academy as well as with well-known artists from Moscow’s underground movement. She lived in New York City in the 90’s and was part of what later became Artists Alliance Inc. on the Lower East Side. Rozenman holds a BFA in Painting from SUNY and an MFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She has studied with artists Gerry Bergstein and Robert Ferrandini. Her paintings and drawings blend the styles and symbols of folk art, illustration, Russian Underground Conceptualism, and Jewish Art. Rozenman exhibits nationally and internationally at venues that have included Trustman Art Gallery at Simmons University, Hudson Gallery in Gloucester, MA, Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, CT, French Cultural Center of Boston, The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery in Washington, DC, Gallery 360 in Minneapolis, MN, The Painting Center in NY, NY, and Moscow Center of Contemporary Art. Rozenman was a MacDowell Fellow in 2006. She is a Core Member at Fountain Street.
Nora Valdez
Image: They are gone (detail)
In the body of work exhibited in “Unfolding Roads,” Nora Valdez explores what for her are recurring themes of home, displacement, and belonging. Her sculptures are shaped in response to the dislocation experienced from being in constant movement, seeking the solace of roots. They are expressions of both personal and collective anxiety in a time of great upheaval. In addition to Valdez’s sculptural work, the exhibition features drawings, shedding light on her artistic process which begins with sketches.
Valdez is an award-winning sculptor originally from Argentina. She graduated from the College of Fine Arts in Villa Mercedes, San Luis, Argentina. She lived and worked in Brazil, Italy and Spain before coming to the United States in 1986. Her work has been exhibited and installed in permanent public spaces in Europe, Asia, North and South America and many states in the U.S. Locally she has shown at the Museum of Fine Art Boston, Fuller Craft Museum, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Sculptors Gallery, Danforth Museum, Springfield Museum, Worcester Art Museum, Fitchburg Art Museum, and Art Complex Museum among others. She has participated in numerous international sculpture symposiums and received funding for public art projects from a variety of sources including the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Georgia Arts Council and Massachusetts Cultural Council. Valdez is a member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery and an Advisor and Professor at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in West Rutland, Vermont.
