Kara Rooney

Kara L. Rooney is an artist based in Mexico City.  Rooney’s primary subject matter is language and awareness, elucidated through painting, sculpture, performance, drawing, photography, installation and prints.  In each case the artist highlights the significance of visual perception brought about by formalist construction.  Rooney’s art hides more than what is revealed by utilizing text reductively while maintaining it as the primary source of aesthetic experience.

East Coast/West Coast (2011) is a solid black cast resin sculpture. Torn fragments of pages from an antique children’s reader appear in the center, reflecting bits of American history, leaving nothing conclusive beyond a sense of curiosity. Rooney performed her own reaction to the perception of meaning in Vortex (2011) a drawing made with charcoal on paper within a 5-foot space. Over the course of an intensive two hour performance, the same curved gesture repeats itself in layers before building up in volume.

WITNESS (2012) critiques the process of observation with the materials of traditional painting. However, this piece features a flattened and creased large-scale canvas pinned to the wall, bearing the word “WITNESS” in black acrylic paint.  Four Poems for Paz (2013) is a site-specific installation that pays homage to the Spanish poet Octavio Paz.  Utilizing aspects of photography and video, this piece begins as a play upon words in the title while the installation itself shows a small, white picket fence in the shape of a square that is engulfed by wild grass.  Rooney miniaturizes one’s sense of safety through enclosure, emphasizing the microcosmic nature of privacy when seen within a larger scope.

Kara L. Rooney completed her MFA at the School of Visual arts in 2009.  Since 2004 she has participated in numerous group exhibitions that have taken place throughout New York and New Jersey.  In 2011 the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center of Kansas City, Missouri, hosted a solo exhibition for the artist titled Monuments of Language from September 2nd to October 29th.  The artist participated in seven group shows during 2012 such as Discourse News that took place at Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York City, Soul Seekers: Interpreting the Icon at Trinity Museum in New York City and Constructed Ambiguity at City Without Walls, located in Newark, New Jersey.  Her work was included in New Media: Forms at the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, NJ in 2012 and from February 22nd to April 5th, 2013 the Dow Center for Visual Arts located in Interlochen, Michigan, hosted a solo exhibition for the artist titled Sililoquies for Former Narcissistic Acts.  Kara L. Rooney was recently an Artist-in Residence at David Wolfe Editions, located in Portland, Maine and in May 2013, the artist presented new work in a group show titled Memphis Social, sponsored by Apexart in Memphis, Tennessee.  She also had work featured in New York Bound, the International Book Art Biennial at the Islip Museum in Islip, New York during Fall 2013.