Mark Rospenda

Slow Slow Down

Slow Slow Down is a solo exhibition at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN, in 2017. Below are installation images, video documentation and a statement about the work. The work grows from my Studiolo project, where further information about individual artworks in the exhibition can be found.

“Slow slow down?” was something I would ask my daughter, Maren, when she was in the little toddler swings and wanted to get out. Sometimes she wanted a fast slow down, other times she wanted to slow down slowly. She’s now almost 7 and the time has flown — no more toddler swings for her. Being a dad has changed my perspective on time. Sometimes, I’d like to slow it down.

The work in this exhibition is loosely interconnected over the concept of time — the speed at which it seems Maren is growing up, the time I’ve been alive (I turn 40 this year, which is equally "old" or "young" depending on where you stand), the time it takes to think, and the time it takes to work with paper as the material for my artwork.

The artwork exhibited here is extracted from an ongoing project I began in 2011 in “conversation” with the Gubbio Studiolo (ca. 1478–1482), a room on permanent exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Gubbio Studiolo was created entirely in wood-inlay intarsia, a form of marquetry. One of the original functions of the Gubbio Studiolo was to act as an aid for associative thinking. My work is part of my own portable studiolo, where contemplation can go hand in hand with forgetting.