At noon, daylight pours through a skylight in Brooklyn’s Carvalho Park, illuminating Rosalind Tallmadge’s 12 x 8.5-foot installation. Light Field (2024). Crafted from delicate Japanese organza and finished with silver mica that metalizes the material through a specialized mirror process, the work bounces off the ceiling like sunlight and floods the gallery. The hanging installation extends from the ceiling to the floor, the luscious silk runs from below to the floor.
This work is the focus of the Brooklyn-based artist’s solo exhibition “AETHER” in Carvalho Park, on display until May 4. Its brightness suggests a gateway to heaven, but the celestial installation is made entirely of earthly materials. “There’s this real material tension in the work between heaviness and solidity and fragility—the pieces seem very ethereal and ephemeral, but they’re very strong and tough,” Tallmadge told Artsy, standing under the skylight. In four stunning selenite crystal cracked wall works, three broken silver mica paintings and a central installation, Tallmadge explores the relationship between light and the human body, a metaphor for heaven and earth for him.
During her MFA program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the 2010s, Tallmadge began incorporating decorative and cosmetic materials into her abstract works to evoke the female body. There, he experimented with mica, metallic leaves and sequin fabrics, adding a human element to his work. Today, this tendency to experiment with materials has become boundary-pushing sculptural processes that incorporate raw materials, metals, minerals, and silk.
In 2017, Tallmadge first connected with Jennifer Carvalho, the director and co-founder of Carvalho Park, through Instagram. Soon after, Carvalho and gallery co-founder Se Yoon Park invited Tallmadge to set up her studio in a back room of the East Williamsburg gallery, where she worked until 2020. During this time, Tallmadge became intimately familiar with the specific features of the gallery — the space, the staff, and most importantly, the light coming from the skylight and garage front door — which inspired his current work.
on the side Light Field This is a trio of mica paintings by Tallmadge where silk is stretched on large frames and applied to mica. These flaky, broken canvases then undergo the same “mirror” process Light Field, where the mica is covered with a thin layer of reflective silver. This mirror also oxidizes the surface, causing color changes in the golden patina, which is clearly visible in the center. Sonambulus II (2024). It receives and reflects the light of the room, and as the viewer approaches, the works reflect on the broken surfaces.
“There’s definitely this line of a nod to the human body,” Tallmadge said. The images appear trapped, embedded in a broken mirror, creating continuous reflections as long as there is light in the room. “With the reflective nature of mirrored pieces, the viewer must be physically present to participate in the pieces. They are against the image; there is something quixotic about making a static object, which is not static”, he added. These canvases seem volatile, giving the viewer a great sense of self-perception rather than capturing a single image.
Elsewhere, Tallmadge evokes the body through beige and rose-toned fabric stretched over a glass frame, with cut selenite crystals affixed to the top for a shattering effect. For the artist, these fractured works symbolize blurred traces, where the body appears far behind the surface.
“The selenite works are cut by hand, so each piece is a stone that I cut, and then put them together like a puzzle on the silk fabric,” Tallmadge said. “It is a very intense process based on an almost ritualistic sense. But then there’s a lot of diversity in how they come out. It’s completely organic.”
Selenite, silver, mica, silk: these natural materials allow Tallmadge to connect his work to something tangible. However, the artist’s approach to his work resembles that of an alchemist, experimenting with raw and earthy materials in search of sublime truths. In these daring experiments at the intersection of painting and sculpture, Tallmadge succeeds where the alchemists could not, beckoning the sublime in these earthy materials.
