Martha Rosler Now Represented by Galerie Lelong & Co., New York
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Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, is pleased to announce its representation of the Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Martha Rosler. The gallery's first solo exhibition by Rosler, Truth is/is not, will be on view from April 10 through May 10, 2025.
For over six decades, Rosler's practice has focused on issues of the public sphere, addressing cultural and political concerns both domestic and foreign, often viewed through the feminist lens of their impact on the lives of women. Rosler works in a variety of media, including video, photography, text, sculpture, and performance, to craft her trenchant cultural commentaries.
Throughout her career, Rosler has created work in response to political events and social issues, such as the American war in Vietnam, the ongoing housing crisis in the United States, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and patriarchal expectations projected upon women. The artist has, on occasion, returned to past works and precepts to recontextualize them for the contemporary moment, demonstrating the long arc of events and the cycles of disruption they evoke. Through her use of mediums like photomontage, film, and text, Rosler often delivers her critiques by repurposing the very forms and images used by the mass media by which information is introduced and disseminated. This direct engagement asks viewers to consider the ways in which they engage with and interpret media sources in their daily lives. Rosler has also created numerous large-scale installations, centering topics such as libraries, consumerism and value, housing and homelessness, and urbanism. These iterative projects recur over decades, being staged in different locales and often in collaboration with activists and other interested parties. Rosler's incisive commentary, often integral to her works in video, also takes the form of critical texts and commentary in magazines, newspapers, and books.
"It is a privilege to welcome Martha Rosler, an artist whose rigorous and ethical practice has long been an inspiration," says Mary Sabbatino, Vice President / Partner at Galerie Lelong & Co. "Her circle and mine have long overlapped, joined by similar values, and I am proud and excited to embark on this working relationship. She joins peers and contemporaries like Alfredo Jaar, Nalini Malani, Ana Mendieta, Nancy Spero, and Krzysztof Wodiczko, strengthening the gallery's commitment to artists who advocate for democracy and the diversity of voices in public space. Rosler's multifaceted approach to artmaking demonstrates that art has the power to expand our perceptions and spur us to action."
Rosler's work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions globally, with notable institutional solo presentations including at the Tate Modern, London (2022); Museum of Recent Art (MARe), Bucharest, Romania (2022); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago de Chile (2019); The Jewish Museum, New York (2018); the Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle (2016); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France (2002); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2000); the New Museum, New York (2000); MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (1999); and the Dia Art Foundation, New York (1989). Her iterative exhibition on housing, homelessness, and the built environment has been mounted many times throughout the past two decades, including most recently at the MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, Italy (2024). Her work is featured in numerous public collections globally, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Tate Modern, London, UK; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Rosler is a recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, Guggenheim Museum Lifetime Achievement Award, College Art Association Distinguished Feminist Award, Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award, a United States Artists Nimoy Fellowship, and the Spectrum International Prize in Photography, among many others.
Galerie Lelong & Co., New York's first solo exhibition with Rosler will open in April 2025. Presenting historic works alongside recent additions to the artist's oeuvre, the exhibition will interrogate issues of political consciousness and the methods of its dissemination from mass media to the public-beginning with an interactive installation confronting visitors with a decision-making exercise regarding how they choose to engage with the show. Central to the exhibition will be a series of texts in English and German by the political theorist Hannah Arendt, suspended throughout the gallery. Lining the walls, works from Rosler's well-known series House Beautiful: Bringing War Home (c. 1967-72) will be on view alongside selections from the 2004-08 reprise of the series, House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, New Series, complemented by works in film and installation.
Rosler was previously included in the gallery's booth at Frieze London 2024; this curated presentation also featured works by Ana Mendieta, Yoko Ono, Pinaree Sanpitak, and Nancy Spero and focused on depictions of femininity, highlighting the gallery's longstanding commitment to championing women artists.
Rosler lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, where she was born.
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Martha Rosler
Cargo Cult, from the series Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain, c. 1966-72
Photomontage