Skip to content

CHRIS DOROSZ

Rosh from Chris Dorosz is a suite of four small busts, each an individual sculptural construction using suspended paint strokes.  Despite their nod to the canons of portraiture, (one object is the artist himself, yet the remaining three were strangers selected randomly by a third party) each form transcends ‘respective likeness’ to reveal the mutability of our mortal selves and physical bodies.

The title 'rosh' is the Yiddish word for head while also a pun on the pronunciation of the artist’s own surname door-rosh and each piece was assigned a random three letter monogram taken from the exhibition's title. Each part of the process from conception to exhibition, is willfully void of individual distinction, with the intent to guide the viewer to contemplate these objects of paint analytically without ascribing emotion, an element conducive to how we habitually understand human identity.  

As a sculptor molds clay to flush out form, Dorosz applies a similar concept to building his painted heads with mixed pigments that resemble the muted hues of a potter’s clay slip. The results are a sustained tension between concrete and vaporous shadows kept just shy of their full individual becoming, a state Dorosz calls ‘the muddiness of being’.