Opening Reception: March 2nd, 2024 2:00 to 5:00 PM

Rosegallery is pleased to present Navigating Pigment, a selection of works by Manfred Müller and Shaun McCracken. Manfred Müller’s Subaqua series blends original selection, resizing, and manipulation with the introduction of new materials, drawing from early 20th-century archival photographs of Arctic scenes featuring rugged human subjects engaged in quests. Curation and chance guide the expressive stages, as Müller adds a watercolor-like splash of blue to imbue raw emotion, pushing the past into perceptual retreat. Influenced by Heerich and Beuys, Subaqua showcases Müller's architectural minimalism and performance-based pieces. Meanwhile, Shaun McCracken's paintings delve into hard-edged geometries through line, color, shape, texture, and their interactions, creating unique visual experiences. McCracken's work centers on color, with each day featuring a new hue that contrasts, complements, or clashes with previous choices, building up over layers to create intriguing juxtapositions within single color areas, signaling completion.

Both Müller and McCracken examine the idea of how an artwork can progress. For Müller, it is manipulating and recontextualizing his source material. He intentionally obscures and highlights different elements of the original photographs through physical manipulation such as watercolor and pigment. McCracken explores progression through an almost organic creative process. His patterns and color grow and grow from the single decision that was made prior.