Slide two of this post is me talking about why I made the towel stairs very late in the evening. An artist statement of sorts!
Documentation of the work bench.
Solo show at Essex Flowers, New York, NY. Oct 8 - Nov 6, 2021.
Don’t say I never made a towel stairs. //
Towel stairs. 2019. Towel, fabric sculpting medium, cement. 1 x 2 x 1/2 ft.
Towel Stairs was part of my solo show exhibit November 2021.
https://essexflowers.us/KATYA-ROZANOVA
This body of work, Important Structures Upheld, is a humorous meditation on power structures that society often deems immutable and aims to maintain at all costs. Essential-for-survival everyday objects, such as cheap white towels and socks from a bodega, found industrial building materials such as rocks, latex gloves, glass, rods, lashing straps and basic fruits like bananas and oranges arranged in unlikely and precarious structures. These assemblages gesture towards holding up or attempting to reach something that may be unreachable, absent, dangerous, or simply not worth the effort.
The quintessential socks and latex gloves, filled with sand and cement, serve as stand-ins for full bodies, for groups of people carrying, lifting, propping, and working together toward some end. These not-quite-realistic, slapstick style, stuffed feet and hands "at work" evoke the dark humor of seeing vulnerable and soft beings propping up or intending to walk up structures that are either too heavy, unstable, or heartbreakingly perilous.
The work may serve, in part, as a modern-day, abstracted allegory of our foolhardy "achievements," our gullibility, and tragic tendency to misplace our efforts. And, on the other hand, our uplifting ability to work together to survive and to find joy in cooperation, in contact with one another, even while oppressed, neglected, or massively bamboozled.