Alfred Rosenbluth: "Heaven Above, The Lake Below"
Pentimenti Art Gallery
145 North Second St.
Philadelphia
Seen March. 25
Showing March 21 — May 3, 2025
Some things are not meant to make sense. That philosophy could be extended to the absurd nature of life itself; or to Alfred Rosenbluth’s surrealist art exhibit, “Heaven Above, The Lake Below,” currently showing at Pentimenti Art Gallery.
The solo show, influenced by “cosmic perspectives, Japanese dance theater, and avant-garde theatrical concepts,” features a series of surrealist sculptures and pencil sketches that animate and articulate the shapes of our existence without imposing any overt meaning.
The fundamental motif in Rosenbluth’s work is repetition. This is observed in form, detail and technique: He molds hydrocal into soft loops that fold like pretzels and imprints serpentine scales into the material, playing with the innate visual power of tessellation and symmetry. That same coiled structure shows up in his sketches, boldly shaded through rhythmic marks that imbue some spirals with the lumpy realness of an umbilical cord.
At the ends of these life lines are ornithological faces, most of them owl-esque. Scattered throughout several of the sketches are eggs, sometimes enlivened by eerie eyeballs. The pieces illustrate the rules of regeneration and yet are always punctuated with the wisdom an apparent end point. There’s no argument about which came first, as in the chicken or the egg. Instead, all these animalistic elements, whether predator or prey, neatly coexist.
Some of Rosenbluth’s quoted ancient influences went over my head as I sorted through his stacked sense of symbolism, but it’s easy to see the effect of 19th- and 20th-century surrealists on his style. I saw the memory of Paul Klee in Rosenbluth’s floating suns and other effervescent doodles.
This contemporary artist’s vocabulary revolves around planetary realities: He references the sun, moon, clouds in addition to plant life and creatures. Though his markings mostly run upwards, building a buoyant feeling, every image is grounded. Imagined objects balance on one another while growing out of clearly constructed grounds. There's no space here for the dreamy materialism penned by other surrealists. The name of the exhibit, therefore, is spot on in its direct anonymity; “Heaven Above, The Lake Below,” captures the whirlpool flow of the universe, on paper and through plaster.
