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Wild Card, A solo exhibition by Chelsea Robot
Temescal Works is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition by Chelsea Rogoff, an abstract painter, multi-media installation artist and curator from New England who resides in San Francisco. The Opening Reception for Wild Card is Thursday, March 14th from 6-9pm, where the artist will be in attendance. The exhibition is free and open to the public until May, by appointment only.
Wild Card is Rogoff’s first solo show since her most recent Artist Residency in Wyoming in 2021. This series of ten works features abstract acrylic paintings on linen as well as watercolor paintings on paper in handmade frames. The artist uses saturated colors and gradations to suggest three-dimensional space with translucency to create trompe-l'œil effects that hint textures of silk or glass. The Wild Card title references one of the various names that Rogoff has been associated with over the years among; Star Gazer, MacGuyver girl, Robot, Sea-star, Tweety, and flojita y cooperando. Each name reflects aspects of her growth, like her relationship with nature and her work ethic in the art world. The artist was curious to find that there was a sincere validity in the way in which she perceived her being through the lens of others. This body of work proposes the question, how can a single thought snowball into a belief, a belief into an illusion, and an illusion into a stunning reality?
Chelsea Rogoff graduated from Montserrat College of Art, located North of Boston, where she majored in Painting and Printmaking with a minor in Art History, and began working for galleries and artists at 19. Currently operating as a working artist; curator, art manager, studio assistant and art handler, Rogoff is required to wear many hats and aims to maintain a clear vision to coalesce these simultaneous roles. Many artists are forced to straddle the fence of production to survive, whereas she believes that working in a comprehensive scope is a gratifying advantage in the art world. Rogoff hopes that her work and paintings can continue inspiring others as a modus operandi of feeding the creative machine. In the paintings of Wild Card, there often appears a kind of luring window or soft portal to enter the composition or go through it. Rogoff said, “I want it (my work) to feel like a safe space to retreat to, a break from the mundane. Like swimming underwater when you’re a kid or climbing a tree. I used to think that it was a playful means of escape: studying obscure things about life and making abstract art in response to it. Now I know that it is a parallel existence that I function in. Just as these names and roles define multiple facets of my free spirit.”
