tl;dr

  • Poised Compression is Rosa Barba's first exhibition at the gallery Corbett vs Dempsey and her debut in Chicago.
  • The eponymous work Poised Compression (2023) consists of a wall-hanging, glazed metal box containing three continuously spinning strips of 35mm film.
  • Poised Compression follows Barba's much lauded solo show The Ocean of One's Pause at Museum of Modern Art in New York.

We rely on readers like you to support our efforts → If you value our news coverage and want to enable more of it, consider supporting us with a contribution

Corbett vs Dempsey, a Chicago gallery specializing in contemporary and 20th century art, is exhibiting works by Rosa Barba. Poised Compression, Barba's first show at the gallery and her debut in Chicago, explores the question of how the artist can engage with the present moment. The show includes a selection of sculptures, film and sound. Poised Compression follows Barba's much lauded solo show The Ocean of One's Pause at Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The proliferation and integration of film into all aspects of human society over the past century has firmly ensconced it in the popular unconscious, influencing our perception of physical and metaphysical reality. Through two decades of artistic practice, Barba has sought to challenge and rewire the firm grip that this cinematic comprehension of the world has had on our collective phenomenological reality. Barba takes the cinematic apparatus and deconstructs it, revealing and criticizing the inner workings of cinema's structuring of time, space and perspective, while simultaneously subverting its substitution of the popular unconscious.

A sunlit gallery with hardwood floors, with a film projector on the floor and tubing above it that has a film strip coming out of it, with large windows in the background.
Rosa Barba, One Way Out, 2009. 16mm film, optical sound, projector, ventilator, tube. Installation view at Braunschweig Kunstverein, 2011 © Rosa Barba

Corbett vs Dempsey previously screened Barba's film Radiant Exposures – Facts Run on Light Beams These Days and also released (through the gallery label) her album In a Perpetual Now of Instantaneousness. With Poised Compression the gallery presents several of Barba's cinematic sculptures, including the 2009 piece One Way Out, which reimagines the film projector as a mysterious feeder that spools film into and back out from HVAC tubing while concurrently projecting the celluoid images.

The eponymous work Poised Compression (2023) consists of a wall-hanging, glazed metal box containing three continuously spinning strips of 35mm film which trace out random figures, creating an ever-shifting, hypnotic dance of lines. Two still pieces by Barba, Weavers (2023), are framed wall works that visualize woven red and milky white 16mm film as an abstract painting.

Poised Compression is open through August 2, 2025. More information about the exhibition can be found on the gallery site.

The link has been copied!