Works — ELENA ROSA

Hugging Atmospheres

 Hugging Atmospheres by Elena Rosa can be perceived as the melting point of the personal consciousness and the collective unconscious. This spatially assembled piece demonstrates a multiplicity of materials and forms as an artistic externalization of social-political conditions with deep contemplation.

 By constructing the three-dimensional artwork, Elena created an imaginary site, a liberated meta-power structure that honors and advocates qualities conventionally perceived as opposite: femininity and masculinity, grandeur and absurdity, archaic and futuristic, restraining and catharsis, and even liveliness and death. It is a mental site suspending judgments, where binary becomes obsolete, and where sensation embraces unconsciousness, all tangibly displayed.

 In Western classical sculpture-making, a sculptor would be constantly focused on the relationship between the physical form and its spatiality: when a shape is formed, a counter-shape is formed too. The coexistence of the shape and the counter-shape makes the sculpture. This may explain an artwork's elusive power, the viewer could perceive a sculpture with an 'aura' – the quality that is allocated by the spatial counter-shape. And a sensual intensity from the material-induced immateriality: the counter-space is the ‘aura’.

 In Elena's Hugging Atmosphere, the coexistence of the shape and counter-shape principle mutates into the interchangeability of the piece’s physicality and spatiality. When the viewer enters this artwork by incorporating its sub-naming: Arena, Aria, Ara, Aurora, Basia, and Carmen; we observe a mesmerizing paradoxical aggregation of physicality and sensuality, pertinence, and opacity. They did not display an explicit parallel but as a coherent, fluid whole. All six interconnected components amplified an alien yet acquainted flavor of the past and future while cherishing the present. The work hosts a spiritual ambiguity with an architectural ideation. Where lies a secret 'seventh component': the artist's persisting honesty and artistic integrity.

 Written by Xue Mu

25 June, 2023

Amsterdam.

Series

Hugging Atmospheres

Arena

Atmosphere of masculinity

An arena full of loud men starts to whisper at the break of dawn. A vibration of tongues clicking singing sinful words. No one is allowed to leave the day. A lonely chill is entering the sandy floor. Frost on the feet of madness gives room for hands to touch the lungs to breath. The men are formatting now, row after row, until their movement stops, it becomes silent. The round pillars are slowly waking up. They’re turning and bending like legs crossing over themselves. The night must have been rough.. The trees outside are laying leaves on their scratches, and the ceiling as the sky is spreading golden lines. Blinding the trapped men’s eyes. Here is where she was born, Arena.

Latex, Clay, Wood 1.76 x 2.89m

Series

Hugging Atmospheres

Aria

Atmosphere of sound

She seems peaceful in the middle of the night. The air she breathes breaks into shattered pieces, as she walks on white sheets engraved in the soil where once some olive trees lived. Her feet are walking freely, without seeing any footprints on the ground, while her hands are touching every part of her scenery. Multiple strokes of dark green satin are draped around her shoulders, they are putting weight on her body, integrating with her intuition while a thunderstorm speaks too loud. Without any effort, she remains in peace. As the lioness of God, she will never have a free day. While the route of the night is spreading out sheet by sheet, the waves are drifting, circulating between her lips, but without consent. She takes a turn as she makes her way into a tiny house where a daughter lays. A broken heart on a cold winter floor, her weeping gets louder the closer Aria goes.

Plaster, clay, diameter is 86 cm

Series

Hugging Atmospheres

Ara

Atmosphere of death

“I will try and speak up under the wings of loss, I dare you to evoke me, to let me feel. Challenge me in the way you describe life, and I will try to let my altar die”. She whispers. She falls on her knees and with her sharp and pointy red nails she scratches as fast as she can into the hardened ground.“My being, Deep in thought, Deeper, Deeper, I need to feel the lava burn, making fossils on my fingertips. I need to remember all of you. Why are you all so important? I need you”, she says out of breath. Her lines and her silhouette move slower. With her head down on her chest, she looks at her hands, her aging has begun. “I will try to move in a forgotten pace, maybe in the heartache of time, we will meet again. Jumping over high grass while the seasons change, I’ll go back into the blankets in the warmth of your arms, looking up into watery eyes this time it wasn’t me that cried”. She speaks softly. And while the sun goes under, She sees a black sea of people stride in her direction. And slowly she falls into a deep sleep, down under a broken ground she dreams heavily.

Clay and plaster

Series

Hugging Atmospheres

Aurora

Atmosphere of warmth

“You breathe the sun at night and lean into the fields of goddesses at dawn. Aurora, can I come into your arms warm as blankets”? A young man says. Aurora smiles and takes a sip of her tea. The floor underneath them is filled with woollen carpets and only a hard wooden table is standing between them. “We know each other for a while now, but I’m not sure if I can answer your words”, Aurora says. The young man looks outside, the windows are steamed up from the heat in the living room. After a while, he gets out of his chair and walks to Aurora, who is sitting on the carpet. He puts his hand out and says: “I want to show you something”. Aurora looks at him doubtfully but takes his hand. Together they walk outside into the garden. The young man turns around and looks at the house in front of him. “My cracking walls are the veins where pile beetles live, broken pieces of grey paint make room for other layers to breath, the sun shields I kept frozen I threw my curtains out, for the sharp-shaped open windows that are made for you to come in”, He says. Aurora looks at him, she sees a young man in need of youthfulness. “Even in my arms you will feel lost, we can’t hide here”, she says. The young man lets go of her hand and while the condensing on the windows is sliding down drip by drip, he looks up and screams as loud as he can…

They’re turning around each other in a dance of hide and seek. “Let it all out”, Aurora says.

Series

Hugging Atmospheres

Basia

Atmosphere of lust

“A foreign kiss, close to where my heart is left, I should have known boundaries. Walking past a midnight sky. My body is losing its way of steadiness. White light is aiming to pull me up right into the universe. I’m holding it against you. I’m climbing on you. Your shoulders are duplicating a thousand times. In infinite you’s, my body retires. Sliding down is not an option. Should I take a leap”? She jumps into the ocean and lets go of her thoughts. Here she is unfindable. With all her strength, she tries to swim deeper into the dark land of the unfamiliar. While echoes of voices are following her muscles, once they reach into her body she has no other choice than to drift above. “My lady of the night, according to some, you are the only one who should be admired. You're the welcoming heat of a stranger in this lonesome landscape. Your line of diamonds gets me walking over the edge. You make me your shadow and I don’t even mind. Where your golden walls are almost collapsing, I seem to hold you. Basia, your arms feel like water without the fear of drowning. And the best part is that I’m not attached to you, I mean I know the sides of the road. I’m at ease with them”. Basia looks down at him while having her hands in his hair. She slowly moves her legs away from where the old man is laying. She tries to go back to her Island, but the sharp sound of his voice is unstoppably annoying. She looks at him with devious eyes and says, “I appreciate your kind words, but unfortunately our time is up”.

Plaster, clay

Series

Hugging Atmospheres

Carmen

Atmosphere of serenity

She needs to leave the labyrinth of evergreen to fight the chaos in the brains of others. She feels however untroubled by the number of people cursing out her name. Outside the labyrinth, she meets the walls of big boxes and talks to the concrete to weaken their ability to last in greed. “Nature will come back to you”, she slowly speaks. As if she puts a spell on the pavement, where heavy legs are walking faster than the speed of their minds, she stands still in the middle of the street, time is slowing down. Streams of salted water are falling on the ground. And still, she is loving every stone that crosses her skin. Tearful faces are looking in her direction. “There should never be a force more powerful than the ability to let go”, She speaks softly. She turns around and while her long gray hair is moving in waves alongside her body, she walks back into her labyrinth. She sits down in the middle of her centre and looks at all the tiny stones around her. Carefully, she staples them one by one until a tower of structures appears.