Composite Host #6

At the heart of Rochelle Goldberg’s sculptural work lies “intraction,” a term the artist uses to describe a set of relationships that involve the blurring of the boundary between one entity and another. The unusual surface of Composite Host #6—an unfinished, indeterminate face that appears bruised—is the result of this phenomenon, created as much by the gathering of the material as by its repulsion, its slipping away beneath Goldberg’s fingers. This creative approach, which is based on the artist’s physical relationship with her raw materials (in this case, ceramics and enamel modeled and imprinted with animal scales patterns, among other things), is echoed by the emotional relationship the viewer forms with the finished work—a mix of attraction and repulsion, empathy and antipathy.