HERB ROSENBERG
ARTIST BIO
I am a left-handed Aquarian art-maker in the tradition of some of history’s most zealous artists.
New York City raised me. Dyslexia prevented me from reading at an early age. To compensate, my mother introduced me to a non-reading voice: working with clay from age nine to eighteen. I half lived in the art school of the Brooklyn Museum.
My college junior year was spent abroad studying sculpture at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts where I lived the Paris life of an art student. Back in the States, I set my sights on continuing my fine art studies in the graduate school at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. To pay for this part of my education, I worked as a Youth Parole Officer in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood.
In 1971 I became a tenured professor at New Jersey City University, got married and became a father. This provided an economic and emotional stability enabling me to seriously pursue my creative work. Becoming a father and then primarily a single parent has been and continues to be a powerfully dynamic and constantly changing phenomenon. When my son was ten years old he accompanied me on a round-the-world tour exhibition of my work. Submerging ourselves into exotic cultures introduced the unexpected into our lives that has enabled both of us to embrace opportunities that have crossed our paths.
We built a cabin/studio in the woods of Cape Breton Island where, since 1974, we have spent every summer without electricity and modern plumbing which brought us closer in other ways.
Throughout my career I have embraced many innovative and inventive solutions in my artwork. Please, take a look at the “Innovative Techniques” section of my website.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Most artists make art with their eyes; I make art with my libido which expresses a very parallel dynamic or archetypical/ aesthetic perspective.Early in my career a critic described my work as ‘Emotions-in-Motion” which very neatly describes both strength and sensitivity in my work.
Over the past sixty years, whether I was creating a 40’ installation or an 11’ bronze figurative work there has always been a potent energy in each piece which I have come to recognize originates from basic human sexual drives.
While I have embraced form as integral part of my work and a for my thematically approach, I am a humanist, always referring back to he state of the human condition.
I am a visual hoarder of symbolism and form, a cacophony of experiences which defines my individual iconography.
My 1994 “American Macho” depict army guns and ammo, morphing into penises and testacies through swirling aluminium two dimensional forms which appear to be three-dimensional.
While creating all of my work I dig deep into my chaotic thoughts and images to hone the process through visual vocabulary culminating in ‘art’
The piece chosen for the Venice Biennale 2019, “Altared Space” is a good example.
Cell: 718-496-4861.