KC ROSENBERG: THE ABSTRACTS’ DILEMMA
September 13 – October 19, 2024
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, September 14, 4 – 6 pm
Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: October 4, 5 – 9 pm
Oakland Style Week Event: Saturday, October 12, 12 – 5 pm
Dr. KC Rosenberg’s artwork experiments with narrative structure. Her work continues a task assigned to Rosenberg in 2021, after she worked with a cognitive therapist to recover from a previous ministroke episode. While the damage from the brain injury was minimal, when listening to personal stories Rosenberg struggled to piece together content and folding together patterns has continued to be a challenge. As a result, Rosenberg was tasked with recalling stories linearly and paying attention to the order of these details. In her artwork, rather than examining narrative structure as a linear story, Rosenberg is interested in examining it as a process. The resulting abstractions are an experiential remembering without identifiable voice, place, or narration. Rosenberg’s material process happens mainly on the floor of her studio, where raw canvas is walked upon and catches poured paint. She washes the canvas and further responds to the marks that have remained. Rosenberg collages on the top surface, adding painted strips of canvas dripping with acrylic paint. The collaged lines appear empty and leave room for text placed within the space to activate poetic associations.
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Available Work
Dr KC Rosenberg
Born in Marin County, California, Dr. KC Rosenberg was raised in a bohemian household shaped by intellectual rigor and domestic improvisation; while her mother worked and studied law, Rosenberg and her siblings were cared for by a shifting network of caretakers, an environment whose chaos fostered early strategies of invention through imagined companions, substitute characters, and close observation of animal behavior. In 2021, medical complications during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a significant shift in her practice toward abstraction, reducing narrative certainty and temporarily setting aside personal history, which later returned as material rather than subject; these formative experiences now register in her work as form and emotional traces rather than representation. Rosenberg has exhibited with Patricia Sweetow Gallery, and her work is held in the collections of the California Arts Council and the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. She holds an Ed.D. and conducts social research on collective mentorship systems among artists.