Golnaz Taherian | Arts Editor
Featured Image: Rosta meshes soft and delicate objects with industrial materials. | Golnaz Taherian
Eszter Rosta, a York visual arts student, presents ‘The Temperament of Space’, an experimental exhibition that highlights the exploration of materials, space, and lighting, and their mutual relationships. Located at the Special Project Gallery of Joan and Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Art, the exhibition focuses on installation and printmaking, and meshing soft and delicate objects with industrial materials.
Rosta’s goal with this show is to elicit both an emotional and physical response from the viewer. For instance, her use of lighting is meant to create a different space outside the context of the gallery.
“The prints were a quick process to do, but there was a lot of handwork that went into it. Also, there was a lot of repetition in order to find something that I liked,” she says.
In one piece, a great fabric sheet is nailed to the wall, with some burn marks on it. Rosta’s aim is to mark an aesthetic contrast between the beige colour of the sheet, and the ragged burn holes thereon. Rosta used rubbing alcohol to map out where she would apply the fire. However, despite her controlled choice of where to burn, the flames forged their own path and created spontaneous, visually pleasing patterns.
In another piece, there’s a wooden pallet with wool wrapped around it. By leaning the pallet on the wall, instead of positioning it on the floor, the object takes on an air of ceremonial significance. Rosta strives to juxtapose the delicate fabric and the industrial piece of wood. She mentions that even though the wool is delicate, wrapping it around as tightly as possible creates tension between the wool and the wood. Rosta also manipulates the lighting to create the shadow of the pallet on the wall, heightening the overall effect.
In another piece, there is pallet on top of a copper sheet. Rosta skillfully plays with the lighting, creating a reflection of the copper onto the nearby wall and ceiling. This rose gold lighting is so subtle that many people don’t notice it. Rosta’s aim with this piece is to create new value out of a skid which most people would simply overlook as a piece of art.
Rosta comments on the most challenging aspect of experimental arts: “Thinking in a bigger scale and being able to know when to stop, when it’s too much and when it’s too little. Sometimes there’s still something inside of me that wants to control the way something looks, and it takes a lot for me to step back and let it rest and do its own thing.”
When asked about her advice for aspiring experimental artists, she replies: “Do your own research, and if people don’t understand it and are not into it, that’s okay. Work like this is not everyone’s favourite and it’s fine. It doesn’t have to be conventional painting to be worthy of art.”
