Ellen Rothenberg
June 25 - July 31, 2010
Schalter is pleased to announce Constellations, a new exhibition by Chicago based artist, Ellen Rothenberg. Constellations features a series of small red price tags in what now feel like seemingly improbably, if not impossibly small sums coupled with commercially fabricated signs.
The tags in Constellations range from 3 cents to the high end of $1.59 and are arranged in small groupings, or constellations, throughout the exhibition space. Blue enamel signs highlight or identify specific elements within the clusters either individually or as a group. Together they present the viewer with layered economies and specificities of value and location. Additionally, the blue signs mirror the explanatory arrows one might encounter in a planetarium, pointing at times and places that are not immediately accessible.
Rothenberg's installations and public projects often employ social movements, politics, and history to interrogate political engagement, memory and social dialog. In her projects, we find the familiar and instructive such as newspapers, protest placards or public signage reformed and rewritten, drawing our attention the assumptions that animate the world around us.
Ellen Rothenberg’s work has been presented in the US and Europe at The Institute of Contemporary Art and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, London's Royal Festival Hall, The Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and The Kent Gallery in NYC among others. Currently her work is included in "Experimental Geography" a touring exhibition curated by Nato Thompson and Independent Curators International NYC. Rothenberg lives and works in Chicago. More information: http://www.ellenrothenberg.com.
