david rosetzskyr artwork

david rosetzky

David Rosetzky (born Melbourne 1970) is a contemporary Australian artist who works across the media of photography, video and installation. His work explores themes of personal and social relations, identity and selfhood. He is known for the elegance and aesthetic rigour of his work, which often draws upon the visual languages of contemporary advertising and cinema.

For his exhibition at Turner Galleries David continues his interest in exploring identity, subjectivity and relationships through photography. The exhibition will include a new series of Rosetzky's black and white analogue photographs, inspired by a broad range of sources, such as the Bauhaus movement, 20th century Avant-Garde photographers and portrait photographers including Richard Avedon, Man Ray and Florence Henri. Rosetzky's black and white photographs and double exposures allude to different psychological and emotional states, memory and self/other relations. The exhibition will also include the artist's iconic cut-out and collaged photographic portraits, these new works challenge gender binaries and explore the complexities of being human by representing the subjects as fragmented, multi-layered and androgynous.

Born in 1970, David Rosetzky has an extensive exhibition history in Australia and internationally. Since 1994 Rosetzky's work has been the subject of 21 solo exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand and Italy, and his work has been included in group exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Asia and the USA including: Cutting edge: 21st Centrury Photography, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne (2015); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, 2014; As Long as You Move, Ark Galerie, Jogjakarta (2014); The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, International Centre for Photography, New York, 2009; and Face Up, Hamburger Bahnhoff, Berlin, 2003. Other selected exhibitions include: South by Southeast: Recent Video Art from Australia and New Zealand, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2011; 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2011; and Crowds/Conversations/Confessions, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, 2006. In 2013 the Centre for Contemporary Photography curated the survey exhibition True Self: David Rosetzky: Selected Works - that toured nationally until 2015. In 2008 the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, commissioned Rosetzky to create a video portrait of actress Cate Blanchett.

David Rosetzky is one of Australia's leading artists, creating skillfully crafted portraits in which identity, as a play between individuality and community, is intimately observed. He is best known for his ambitious video installations as well as his sculptural and photographic work. His video installations and photographic works take on the aesthetic of high-end adverting, juxtaposing its emphasis on idealised surface appearance, with personal experiences of being in the world.

His work is held in many Australian state gallery collections. Rosetzky was the founding Director of the influential, Melbourne artist-run gallery 1st Floor Artists and Writers Space (1994-2002).