In the Cooler: Privacy Policy – Libby Rosa & Aaron Granat
Artisan Gallery
Apr. 15, 2024 - May. 29, 2016
Privacy Policy is a multimedia collaboration between painter Libby Rosa and film maker Aaron Granat who share a similar interest in the aesthetics of intimacy and private contexts. The art on display resulted from a particular process developed by the two artists in 2014 in which they would travel to strangers’ homes and render them on site, intimately posing in their private spaces in various forms of undress.
The subjects were found by posting a Craig’s List ad briefly outlining the project and promising the subjects a print of any painting to be made. The response was varied, but yielded many willing participants. Granat and Rosa made seven artistic excursions over the course of a year from 2014 to 2015. The subjects varied in age, gender, number, ethnicity, and economic status. The subjects also differed in the extent to which they exposed aspects of their private lives to us. Each session would last for approximately an hour, Libby furiously painting, sketching, and taking photos in a circumscribed area while Aaron lugs his cumbersome tripod about the space trying to capture small movements of beauty as they erupt in time. Sometimes these sessions were characterized by a tense silence, other times Libby and the subjects would chat casually and laugh in endearingly awkward communion.
In showing this work, the artists first and foremost aim to explore notions of privacy, intimacy, and vulnerability: how are these notions enacted within an artistic context? Furthermore, they investigate how process shapes form; they tell a personal story of artistic discovery by pushing the boundaries of practice through innovative techniques; they show how artistic media can play with representation through their own unique forms of expression; they ask the viewer to ponder the role of vulnerability (both as experienced by the artist and the subject) in forging an industrious creative process; they ask the viewer to consider how the artist makes themselves present in their work (how the artist becomes the subject of his or her work).