What Is Psychedelic
March 10–June 11, 2023
What Is Psychedelic, co-presented by Mishkin Gallery and Pioneer Works, marks the first institutional survey of New York-born artist Aura Rosenberg. The two-venue exhibition opens at Mishkin Gallery on March 10 and at Pioneer Works on March 17. The expansive exhibition traces the artist’s trajectory from early paintings of the 1970s to her more recent endeavors in photography, film, sculpture, and installation. Throughout her five decades-long career in New York and Berlin, Rosenberg has moved through diverse styles, preferring to work thematically and serially while often returning to ideas from past projects. The exhibition also includes several previously unseen works, and Rosenberg’s collaborations with artists like Ei Arakawa, Mary Heilmann, Mike Kelley, Louise Lawler, and Haim Steinbach, all of which chronicle the breadth of her multifaceted career.
Rosenberg’s practice challenges how images produce and reproduce notions of spectatorship, gender, family, and history—that is, the conditions of everyday life. In this way, she examines how vernacular images naturalize and normalize meanings through which people understand themselves in the world.
Several series on view in the exhibition, such as Who am I? Where am I? What am I? (1996–2008) and Head Shots (1991–96), involve feminist gestures of convening communities, be it the children of her friends or the men in her social circles. Others, like Statues Also Fall in Love (2019–ongoing) and The Dialectical Porn Rock (1989–93), comment more broadly on collective memory and the shifting, socially produced meanings of public space and the bodies that inhabit them. Her series Berlin Childhood (1996–ongoing) and Angel of History (2013–ongoing) reference Walter Benjamin’s as well as her family’s history of exile from Nazi Germany, as well as more recent histories of exile worldwide.
Accompanying the exhibition is an extensive monographic reader co-published by Mishkin Gallery and Pioneer Works Press and designed by Daniel Kent. The publication pairs full-color plates of the artist’s work alongside newly commissioned and archival texts penned by a dynamic roster of artists, historians, and curators that includes Lena Dunham, Alaina Claire Feldman, Matt Keegan, Claire Koron Elat, Laura López Paniagua, Tim Martin, John Miller, Bob Nickas, Barbara Piwowarska, Lumi Tan, and Alexandra Tell. Notably, this publication will be the first to engage with Rosenberg’s entire oeuvre to date.
Please join the artist for public opening receptions celebrating What Is Psychedelic on March 10, 2023, at Mishkin Gallery and on March 17, 2023, at Pioneer Works. Learn more and make a reservation to visit the exhibition
Aura Rosenberg: What Is Psychedelic is curated by Alaina Claire Feldman. The exhibition at Mishkin Gallery is supported by the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College (CUNY) and Friends of the Mishkin Gallery. The exhibition at Pioneer Works is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
March 10–June 9
Mishkin Gallery
135 East 22nd Street
New York City, New York
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March 17–June 11
Pioneer Works
159 Pioneer Street
Brooklyn, New York
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