Nikki Rosato’s exhibition titled “Inbound” is also on view until Sept. 18. With meticulous execution, her pieces are a testimonial to compulsive determination and facility; they are visually amazing and stunningly spectacular.
Like Aoyama’s stonecutting, Rosato uses a subtractive process; however, she laboriously cuts road maps (using a X-Acto knife with No. 11 fine point blade) to remove the landmasses and preserve only the roads and waterways.
Except for the portrait head, her figurative works are very flat and beautifully installed to take full advantage of their cast shadows. One all-white work moves the process even further. In an email the artist explains: “I cut a map piece that I had made, traced it on the (drawing) paper and then re-cut it. So I think of it as a cut map piece, once removed.”
“The visual aspects of a road map are remarkably human,” looking very much like the circulatory system of arteries and nerves,'' Rosato says.
For her, a map’s geography often has a connection with the subject that inspires a piece, such as “Untitled (Portrait),” her most recent male head and the only 3-D work on view.
Written by Fred B. Adelson