Location: United States
Alexandra (Alya) Rozenman was born in 1971 in Moscow, USSR. Not without political disagreement she was classically trained in a Soviet Art Academy but later on also studied with today well-known dissident artists from Moscow underground movement. Still a teenager she became part of Moscow alternative cultural scene of the 1980’s.
Later she immigrated to the U.S. She lived in New York in the 90’s being a part of what later became The Art Alliance program on Lower East Side. Rozenman received her BFA from SUNY in 1993. Later she relocated to Boston and received an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1998. Her paintings and drawings blend the styles and symbols of folk art, Russian Underground Conceptualism, illustration, and Jewish Art. She received a MacDowell Foundation Fellowship in 2006. Rozenman exhibits both nationally and internationally, including recent venues at Trustman Gallery in Simmons College in Boston, Fountain Street Gallery in Boston and Hudson Gallery in Gloucester, MA. She is a member of Fountain Street Gallery in Boston.
current series of paintings, originally titled "Transplanted," focuses on humorous narratives of cohabiting, moving with, running to, waiting for... with famous artists across history. She begins her paintings by researching scenes of everyday life during a particular artists era, then metaphorically meets and blends it with her own experiences and vistas. By inserting herself into the paintings, Rozenman points out the irony of living with another artists’ work for inspiration. Most recently, Rozenman has allowed her scenes to become metaphorical by removing the figure of the artist entirely from the painting. There is an intriguing game between inside and outside. Examples include furniture appearing in the forests, a theater stage falling into an ocean, and large old ships shrinking down only to end up burning in a cozy indoor fireplace. What the artist calls "these places-at-odds" can be viewed as a metaphor for immigration, and a cathartic journey of reinventing a new personal and artistic identity
“Falling in Love with Matisse”
The subject and color palette of “Falling in Love with Matisse (after the conversation)” evokes world-known painting by Matisse called “The Conversation”.
In this painting Rozenman once again makes a statement about Modernism, Art History and Eternal Return. Rozenman has “transplanted” in her painting the recognizable bright cobalt blue wallpaper, the window, and the black chair from Matisse’s original painting. At the same time she creates a historical and geographical dialogue between before and after. Inside her painting the lovers of the original painting move to the small Communal apartment making us think about the puzzling aftermath of the Conversation between them. What did they talk about in France at these times? Nationalism? Socialism? Immigration? Love? Art? Cats? Paris? Had they visited Saint Petersburg between 1908-1912 where they had already contacted some of the underground Bolsheviks dreaming of bloody revolutions? Just opening the episode in the Matisse painting to all these questions challenges and amuses our imagination… But wait: they have a boombox with them? Rozenman’s time traveling machine has a lot of twists and turns…
“Our first Harvest in Paris” by Alexandra Rozenman is a surreal and playful horizontal 48 x 24 x 2 inch. oil painting on canvas. Two beautiful spaces are united into one powerful image. On the left of the painting is a bluish night landscape with a big family of goose running either from something or towards something – we can’t be sure? On the opposite side of the canvas, creating the border is a cozy and welcoming interior of an empty house with wooden floor, green antique walls and a window with an iron balcony and a view of Paris, the city of Love.
On the bottom of the right side, close to us there is a couple digging into the imagined garden or may be picking up the harvest. A soccer ball rests next to men’s leg. Do people plant flowers in soccer fields? In Paris, you never know. The beauty of understanding each other, building up the new life on a new land, gardening, home, migration all come together in this powerful narrative painting.
But as in many other paintings by Rozenman this piece has a second layer. Its composition, as well as subject, recall a famous painting by a French XIX century painter Gustave Caillebotte, Raboteurs de parquets, 1875. (Floor Cleaners). It wants to connect past with the future and love with hard work.
“Flood in Giverny” by Alexandra Rozenman is a nice horizontal medium size 40 x 20 x 2 inch oil on canvas that tells us a surreal story about a famous Impressionist Claude Monet. It is a historical fact that from 1883 Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property and began a vast landscaping project included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. In 1899 he began painting the water lilies, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature, and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life. In this painting Rozenman used real images of Monet’s interior and his paintings to create a surreal scene of a lily pond inside his house. Dusty wallpaper with a cherry design, yellow walls of the living room, striped blue couch and stream of deep blue water coming from under it towards beautiful floating lilies in every soft and bright color possible. This painting is about paintings. It is a made-up story of history, art, nature, house and water
“First Harvest in Paris”
“Flood in Giverni”
