Exquisite Corpse

Samantha Rosenwald

Arsenal Contemporary Art is pleased to present Exquisite Corpse, Samantha Rosenwald’s debut solo exhibition in New York. Featuring a suite of new colored pencil on canvas paintings, the works in Exquisite Corpse examine female identity as a vessel for external influence and its potential for commodification. 

Double entendres are ever present in this body of work, including the exhibition’s title, Exquisite Corpse, which is not only a reference to the surrealist parlour game and artistic method, but also to Rosenwald’s use of figuration and memento mori. Rosenwald carves out a visual language of recurring imagery that acts as metaphors and provides layers of meaning, allowing the viewer to weave polymorphic narratives about gender, power structures, and identity. 

Rosenwald’s depiction of ‘the female’ toggles between moments where she is the victor, moments where she is the victim, and moments where that distinction is blurred. Many of the paintings cleverly stitch together allusions to art history with contemporary cultural references, creating a well-researched synthesis of instances where the female body is seen as a commodity. Often fashionably adorned in Prada, Gucci, or Jacquemus, her characters are stripped of their own identity, relying on their fashion sense to act as sole indicators of their personhood. This draws attention to the idea that simply by participating in contemporary culture, women are susceptible to a cycle of consumerism that panders to patriarchal systems. 

Through this new body work, Rosenwald is able to address notions of commodification, and confront them head on through her lens. These paintings parlay the anxiety around the aforementioned themes into darkly humorous and extremely poignant paintings that speak to complexities of identity and the volatility of the female experience.