Laura Donohue: Greetings from Giant Forest | June 13 - July 11, 2009

Press Release

For Immediate Release
Roos Arts
449 Main Street
Rosendale NY, 12472
t. 718-755-4726
e. info@roosarts.com
www.roosarts.com

Laura Donohue: Greetings from Giant Forest
June 13 - July 11, 2009
Opening Reception, Saturday, June 13th, 7 – 9 pm

Roos Arts in Rosendale, NY, is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of works by
Laura Donohue. Greetings from Giant Forest brings together large-scale digital
prints and meticulously constructed sculptures that invite you into a world of
natural curiosities, familiar objects displaced, and an awareness of time that isn’t
quite measurable in the usual sense.

It is through the realism of the photographic image that Laura Donohue sets the
stage for this material life to come into focus. Backdrops of natural scenery or
vaguely identifiable interiors are but a reference point for the hyper physical
details of the objects that foreground this place. Things such as a bird, a book, a
piece of sculpture, ceramics, and out-dated models of equipment are seen
distorted in scale, perspective, and depth of field. It is apparent that the figure-
ground relationship is awry, and as a result the visual anchors for a linear
narrative and a sense of time are confounded.

Donohue ultimately challenges the basic convention that photography reflects
what is true to life and, taken even further, that the use of multiple viewpoints
can highlight the limits of materiality. This is the point where objects are
abstracted from their context and given the potential for expressing a meaning
of their own. Elements and details in these images bear their own histories, hint at
new relationships, and create an uncanny sensation that questions our
memories.

The artist states that “the concentrated perspective [in her work] more closely
approximates the ‘all-at-once’ view of human vision and mental apprehension.”
In both her print work and sculptures, it is evident that Donohue is a keen
observer of both the natural and the man-made world where the convergence
of all these components suggest a kind of archive, a fantasy or dream, and even
allude to alternate realities.