Yacht Rock, mixed media, 20 x 6 x 30 in, 2025
FELLOW IMAGINARIES
A Collaborative Installation by
CAROLE d’INVERNO and SUSAN ROSTOW
with Incidental Music by BILL FRISELL
April 22 – May 10, 2025
Opening Reception:
Thursday, April 24, 5 to 8 pm
Instagram Live Feed & Walk Through:
Tuesday April 29, 1 pm www.instagram.com/susanrostow
Artists in Conversation with Etty Yaniv
at the Gallery and on Zoom:
Saturday, May 3, 5 to 6 pm
RSVP for the zoom link at fellowimaginaries@gmail.com
Atlantic Gallery is pleased to present Fellow Imaginaries, a collaborative exhibition by artists Carole d’Inverno and Susan Rostow with an ambient soundtrack by composer Bill Frisell.
For d’Inverno and Rostow Fellow Imaginaries is the culmination of a long process of sharing ideas as artists, friends, and neighbors. Over the past year, via trial and error, doing and undoing, they have arrived at a shared narrative of labor and play. The work they are presenting comes from memories and stories of their upbringing, d’Inverno in Italy and Belgium, Rostow in Philadelphia and New York City. Their knowledge and experience as mature artists pulls the work into focus and clears it of unnecessary narrative. Bill Frisell, a renowned composer, has worked with d’Inverno and Rostow before. This time, he lends his signature sound to create an ambient soundtrack inspired by the sculptures and paintings. The ethereal soundtrack enhances the visual experience of the exhibition.
The direct connection between d’Inverno and Rostow is fully apparent in their 3D collaborative sculptures. We see them fusing their esthetics to create a hybrid. The pieces are mostly in white or muted tones and are connected via wires that enhance the works’ narrative. The sculptures evoke manual labor and play. We see them pull and push fanciful loads, as in Yacht Rock. Others swing from a makeshift circus trapeze, as in Acrobatica, or juggle plates, as in GrandMa’s Porcelain. All are the result of long talks, shared stories, and memories.
For d’Inverno, this collaboration has opened new pathways in her artistic practice. She reconnected with the making of 3D objects. To make her sculptures, she transformed her space from a painting studio to a shop and used found objects, paper clay, and papier-mâché. These new works seem, at times, to be toppling over and display inherent fragility and playfulness. d’Inverno is also presenting new paintings made in response to Rostow’s colors and shapes. The new work is notable in the use of a narrative of building blocks, and earthy tones as in North-South.
For Rostow, the collaboration unexpectedly shifted her palette from earthy tones to pastels and nearly white pieces. She also reversed her usual process for creating biomorphic figurative sculptures. Previously, she built a foundation of prints on paper and wire, then applied clay and pigments on top. In this collaboration, she began with a clay foundation, layering prints on paper and wire over it. This approach resulted in a lighter surface color, with exposed wires intentionally left visible to connect her pieces to d’Inverno’s physically.
Fellow Imaginaries is a testament to the power of artistic exchange, where materials, ideas, and processes merge to form a shared visual language. Through their collaborative sculptures and individual works, d’Inverno and Rostow push each other into new creative territories, while Frisell’s ambient soundtrack ties it all together, making the exhibition an immersive, multi-sensory experience.
Carole d’Inverno (b. 1956, Spa, Belgium) is a research-driven artist focusing on American history. Her paintings and drawings investigate themes of immigration, and the human impact on the land. Notable solo exhibitions include the Duluth Art Institute, Duluth, MN; Atlantic Gallery, NY, NY; The Massillon Museum, Massillon, OH; The Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC; PENN State University, Altoona, PA; and the State University of New York, Rochester, NY. d’Inverno has participated in exhibitions at the Maitland Art and History Museums, Maitland, FL; North Seattle College Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; NARS Foundation, NY, NY; Schweinfurth Art Center, Auburn, NY; Notre Dame of Maryland University, Baltimore, MD; and the Ronald Barr Gallery, Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, IN, amongst others. d’Inverno lives and works in New York.
Bill Frisell (b. 1951, Baltimore, MD). Frisell’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 40 years and many celebrated recordings, whose catalog has been cited by Downbeat as ‘the best recorded output of the decade.’ In recent years, Frisell has forged a distinctive and fruitful collaboration with the Blue Note label, releasing HARMONY, Valentine and FOUR to great acclaim. Recognized as one of America’s 21 most vital and productive performing artists, Frisell was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist in 2012. He is also a recipient of grants from United States Artists, Meet the Composer among others. In 2016, he was a beneficiary of the first FreshGrass Composition commission to preserve and support innovative grassroots music. Upon San Francisco Jazz opening their doors in 2013, he served as one of their Resident Artistic Directors. Frisell is the subject of a documentary film by director Emma Franz, entitled Bill Frisell: A Portrait, which examines his creative process in depth, as well as an extensive biography by Philip Watson, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed The Sound of American Music.
Susan Rostow (b. 1953, NYC, NY) is a Brooklyn based process-driven multi-media artist working in printmaking, sculpture, and animation. Her work investigates the balance between nature and technology, the real and imagined, and physical and digital realities. Rostow is a recipient of several awards, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Printmaking / Book Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship and the Anolic Jewish Book Arts Award. She has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout NYC and the United States, Europe, Peru, Korea, and Japan. Her prints and sculptural books are in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress National Print Archives, Washington DC, the Allan Chasanoff Bookwork Collection at Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, and the Washington State Art Collection, Olympia, WA.
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