Afterglow

The Front Room is proud to present Emily Roz’s “Afterglow,” her 4th solo exhibition with the gallery. Roz is known for her (sometimes lurid) hyper-detailed oil paintings and drawings depicting scenes from nature. Her macroscopic paintings referencing the seed-pods from the Southern Magnolia fruit pods titillate and tantalize. In her new paintings, Emily Roz embraces the perverse. Biomorphic forms push up against each other, spill over and attempt to penetrate, taking an equal opportunity approach to inexact body parts.

Beginning with observational drawing, Roz uses addition and omission to morph segmented botanical shapes into incongruous bodily juxtapositions. In browns, pinks and orange, the sexualized forms hover on a white gessoed background of negative space. Roz’s compositions exist in a void. The permutations are fluid and re-embodied to infer figuration. Loaded up with bulbous volume and lush texture, the incongruous shapes resemble flesh and muscle and bones. The intentionally charged ambiguity leaves the innuendo open to uninhibited interpretation.

Emily Roz received an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA from Hampshire College where she studied Art History, Literature and Weaving. She has been covered in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, The Washington Post, Joy Quarterly, W+G Williamsburg News + Art, Apollo Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail and NewCity Chicago. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including Front Room Gallery, Mulherin, Auxiliary Projects, Parlour, and 31Grand in New York; Decatur Blue in Washington DC; NUDASHANK in Baltimore; articule in Montreal; Gardenfresh in Chicago, Franklin Street Works in Connecticut and The Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.