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David Rosetzky

David Rosetzky's work explores the possibilities of contemporary portraiture using a variety of media including video, sound, photography and objects in space. Through his physical handling of his photo-portraits, Rosetzky problematises the nature of subjectivity. After a process of layering, Rosetzky cuts the photographs by hand and repositions them to reveal the images beneath. The resultant portraits are a literal manifestation of the fragmented and fragile character of selfhood.

Rosetzky’s photo-sculptural installations draw on the language of advertising, reality TV, fashion and lifestyle magazines to address themes of anxiety, alienation, desire and personal relationships. Self Contained (2004) critically examines commercial design aesthetics via an engagement with the alienated subject. The model’s blank expression mirrors the way in which the worlds of fashion and advertising transform subjects (as well as commodities) into objects of desire. In Self Contained, the body beautiful is dismembered and confined. Holes pierce the body and are threaded with decorative chains that also bind the subject to commercial culture.

Through his typically cool aesthetic, Rosetzky also explores the complex, tenuous and often fraught character of contemporary relationships. The young people that are represented by life-sized cut-out mounted photographs in Commune (2003) appear alienated as they stare into space but a flickering plastic lighting tube binds them together. Rosetzky’s video installation, Untouchable (2003) – the winner of the 2005 Anne Landa Award – speaks to our desire to forge emotional relationships and the tensions that arise when those connections fail.