Hogar Collection Gallery is pleased to present ¨Into the Air¨, March 17 – May 1, 2006, an exhibition of sculpture and works on paper by Alfonso Cantú and Todd Rosenbaum, with an opening reception on Saturday, March 18 from 6-9 pm. The works in the exhibition find a commonality in their depicitons of the sky, clouds, objects spinning out of control, explosions, metaphors of creation and destruction, as well the stories they tell of ephemerality and exisitence. They seem to travel into the fragile space where things verge on being out of control yet exist in a space of complete harmony.

Alfonso Cantú’s work is a process of reconfiguring and transforming the history, design, function, and value of the objects and materials around us in everyday life. The forms he creates oscillate between the symbolic/functional significance of what the original object is and the alternate meanings that can be produced by the cultural / art historical context that contain their design. His interest is to enhance and expose the underlying elements of states of temporality that exist within architectural elements, domestic objects and materials. In essence, how their representation and recontextualization resonates in our experience of the space they / we inhabit. Cantú will be showing large color pencil drawings on paper that depict pedestal fans spinning out of control in the sky as if in a catastrophic situation that is in it’s final moments of existence and is getting ready to wisp away, like the clouds that it agitates. He will also be showing new sculptures using fans as an inspiration. He has recently participated in the Bronx Museum - Artists In the Marketplace program, was awarded a NYFA grant for sculpture and received his MFA from Rutgers University and a MA at Goldsmiths College in London.

Todd Rosenbaum’s work engages tragedy, comedy, harmony, creation, destruction and the fragility of existence. Using depictions of skyscapes that are filled with clouds and explosions either at the precise moment of night’s change to day, or at the center of the vacuum of deep space at the instant of the beginning of “time”. They are subversive scenes in that it is uncertain if they are violent or serene. Clouds at times are either hiding what we “think” is happening on the other side, or they could be the effect of tremendous explosions. Explosions that pose a question that is either subversively “political” in the idea that they evoke war and destruction or they can be seen as subversively “religious” in that they speak of the creation of the grand cosmos. The true explanation is not revealed, leaving the question as mysterious or sublime as the experience we witness. Rosenbaum will be showing comic book-like gouache paintings on paper as well as, steel and cotton mobiles, ” floating cloud masses”, that flutter in the air”. He is the co-director of Hogar Collection Gallery and also received his MFA from Rutgers University.

Transmission Artists