September 30, 2023 - November 11, 2023
Gallery reception: Saturday, September 30 from 2:00 to 5:00 pm
Burner, 2023, Oil on Canvas, 20 x 24 inches
In choosing “Heat Island” as the title for his exhibition, the artist aptly characterizes the manifest content of the work on view. This term, according to Rogers, “refers to the phenomenon of urbanized areas experiencing higher temperatures than outlying areas.” And, just as promised, the two small sculptures and ten elegantly executed oil on canvas paintings (in a variety of sizes ranging from 14 x 16 inches to 71 x 79 inches) on view in this show, though they are cool to the touch, suggest the sensation of heat the artist’s title invokes.
But heat here is presented not so much in the positive sense as a source of human sustenance and protection from the cold but rather as a nagging—if subtly and deeply coded—cause of concern. And the vague sense of unease that begins in the realm of this artist’s content—the gas flames of course, but also an open refrigerator and other suggestive subjects as well—is amplified in the realm of form (and perhaps even exhibition design), as objects and images of markedly different sizes and proportions jostle against one another on the gallery walls, competing in interesting ways for the viewer’s attention.
The artist and writer Henry Chapman observes that amidst the allusions to heat in Rogers’ paintings there is a notable absence of human actors guiding events. The machines appear to go their own way. “People are absent in these images,” Chapman writes, “recognizable only in the residue of their habits. The paintings present a vision of the world that has been set in motion,” he continues. “No hand reaches for the milk or lights the burner or wields the hammer. No one is there to shut the fridge door.” Not quite yet giving up hope, the writer asks, “What is the best way to hammer a nail, anyway?” “The paintings seem to answer,” Chapman concludes, “by touching the brush to the surface,” the artist’s own carefully rendered brushstrokes thus proving, in the final analysis, to be the one sure and hopeful sign of human presence after all.
Installation Views
