About halfway through his presentation at Peeler Art Center this Thursday, artist Mark Rospenda displayed an image of a sea fan on the projector. “Who doesn’t love sea fans?” he asked, laughing. Sea fans, he explained, are a type of filter feeders who are immobile and at the mercy of the environment. Similar to humans in the new age of technology, information is constantly coursing through them. Images have become a source of sustenance for humans. With growing tensions in our social climate, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid the downsides of a constant information stream. "Filter Feeder" delves into the challenges of navigating a world saturated with images and explores the fragility of convictions in the face of adversity.
Hailing from South Bend, Indiana, Rospenda creates the majority of his projects around his specific interests and their connections to the current social climate. Citing "Studio from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio," the memory palace and doorway effect phenomena, and his graduate school linguistics class as a few of his inspirations, he creates drawings using incised and cut paper and paper pulp sculptures. He became interested in the manipulation of paper due to it being flat but carrying a sense of three-dimensionality. Also, it is ubiquitous as a “mode of communication and information that we use every day.”
His creative process usually includes working on multiple drawings simultaneously. Rospenda stacks these drawings on top of each other and cuts into them, swapping and switching out aspects of each to create something new. He also treats sculptural elements like drawings, as they are always developing and evolving. In fact, he often reuses his old drawings, shredding them into a paper pulp that he sculpts into new objects.
He was eager to complete his installation at DePauw, as some aspects of his exhibition were too large to assemble until he got the opportunity to work in the gallery space. In just a week, he completed his 40-foot long installation, “Untitled (Hurricane),” which he had completed in 5 by 6 foot pieces. “This is the best experience I’ve ever had sharing my work,” he explained.
"Filter Feeder" by Mark Rospenda will be on display until Dec. 8, 2023, in the upper level of the Peeler Art Center University Gallery. The gallery is open to the public.