Press Release

Over the past three decades, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist and educator David Rosetzky has garnered critical acclaim for his lens-based works that explore human relationships and the construction of social identity. Drawn from the NGV Collection, this presentation brings together three of Rosetzky’s seminal video works created over a twelve-year period.

The earliest of these, Weekender, 2001, introduces Rosetzky’s distinctive aesthetic – seductive, technically refined visuals that echo high-end advertising – set in contrast with the often unsettling inner monologues of his characters.

Rosetzky’s collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to art-making sees him work with practitioners from a wide range of creative fields, including theatre, dance and film. In Think of yourself as plural, 2008, the psychologically charged nature of his work is paired with subtle, expressive movements devised in collaboration with choreographer Lucy Guerin. The final work, Half brother, 2013, created with choreographer Jo Lloyd, transforms a contemporary dance piece into a highly stylised interrogation of male bonding and social relations.

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About the Artist

David Rosetzky works predominantly in video and photographic formats, creating scenarios in which human behaviour, interactions, individuality and identity come under intimate observation. Technically and aesthetically precise, his slick portraits resemble the idealized images found in high end advertising screen culture. Rosetzky has been making portraits since the early 1990s. His stylized, moody and strikingly beautiful videos, photographs, animations, sculptures and drawings are presented in complex installations that explore the central themes of identity, subjectivity, contemporary culture and community. Rosetzky is primarily interested in the ways in which relationships with others shape a sense of self and group belonging. Artifice, illusion, deceit and anxiety are subtle themes that extend across his practice. Fashion, with its emphasis on surface and materiality, provides an interesting counterpoint to Rosetzky's interest in layering and portraiture and the relationship between interiority and exteriority, reality and fantasy, authenticity and artificiality.

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Also Exhibiting at National Gallery of Victoria | NGV

About the Gallery

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is a major public art museum in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, and the country’s oldest and most visited gallery. Founded in 1861, the NGV now holds more than 75,000 works spanning First Nations, Australian and international art, design, and architecture, making it one of the most significant collections in the region.

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