Rosa Barba. Pensiero Spaziolungo

About

“Rosa Barba’s work is a subtle interrogation into and co-option of industrial cinema-as-subject, via various kinds of what might be understood as “stagings”... The effect [of] her work contests and recasts truth and fiction, myth and reality, metaphor and material to a disorientating degree... a conceptual practice that also recasts the viewer’s own staging as an act of radical and exhilarating reversal – from being the receiver of an image (a subject of control) to being in and amongst its engine room looking out.” (Ian White, 2011).

At the center of the show is Drawn by the Pulse, a new silent 35mm filmic sculpture that combines astronomical researches and cinematographic techniques. “I was intrigued about how stars actually work like a film projector and how Henrietta S. Leavitt was working like a filmmaker”. Filmed at the Harvard Astronomical Observatory the work is dedicated to American astronomer Henrietta S. Leavitt and her research on observation, quantification and calculation of the colour and luminosity of stars made visible on the photographic glass plates produced by two Harvard telescopes.

Rosa Barba has presented her sculptural objects, installations, live performances, site-specific interventions and cinematic works in solo exhibitions for nearly two decades. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, biennials
and film festivals worldwide. Recent solo exhibitions include Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada (2018; upcoming); Tabakalera, San Sebastian (2018); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Palacio de Cristal, Madrid (2017); Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2017); Vienna Secession (2017); Malmö Konsthall (2017); CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2016-2017); Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2016); Albertinum, Dresden (2015) and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2015). Her work has been widely published, most recently, in the monographic books Rosa Barba: From Source to Poem (2017) published by Hatje Cantz and Rosa Barba: The Color Out of Space (2016) published by MIT List Visual Arts Center/Dancing Foxes. Rosa Barba was awarded various prizes, amongst others the International Prize for Contemporary Art (PIAC) by the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco (2016). She lives and works in Berlin.