Rosa de Jong in “Downsized” at Bruce Museum

Sat, Nov 3 - Sun, Jan 27  2019

From November 3rd until January 27th, the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT will be displaying a group exhibition called “Downsized: Small-Scale Sculpture by Contemporary Artists” featuring Dutch artist Rosa de Jong. Please check the Museum website for admission prices, directions, and special offers. 

 
Rosa de Jong, Bruce Museum’s “Downsized” exhibition – Installation Shot

Downsized

Enticing viewers to take a closer look, this exhibition of miniatures, models, and dioramas explores interior and exterior architecture in a range of scales. Some works contemplate the structure and its place in history as a monument to architectural creativity. Others pay homage to the history of an urban environment or to the emotions elicited by places close to our hearts. Yet others depict fanciful, surreal places that could only exist in miniature.

The sculptures encourage observers to suspend their perception of reality and to invent their own narrative. These mixed media sculptures fascinate because of the juxtaposition of size and subject and elicit amazement at the precision of the workmanship.

Rosa de Jong, Bruce Museum’s “Downsized” exhibition – Installation Shot

Rosa de Jong

Cozy cottage, amazing cliffside views, is how a realtor might describe these charming homes. Delicately crafted using tweezers, X-acto knives, paper and cardboard, these tiny idylls are the work of Amsterdam-born artist Rosa de Jong. Allowing her imagination to take flight and relying on organic designs, de Jong builds each vertical biome using bits of nature that she has collected in a nearby park or from faraway places. In these particular works, there is sand from Tenerife and bark from a tree from Florida. The juxtaposition of the ingredients from around the globe within the tiny floating island creates a dynamic interaction, pointing out the differences among the source locations—the world encapsulated in a test tube. In the small dome, the structure is isolated from the rest of the world as if it were a specimen to be examined clinically. These intricate objects provide a meditative, out-of-this-world experience.