At 14 feet high and about 40 feet long, "Tenuous Arrangements" is the largest and first in-the-round piece Rowe has imagined, thanks to the challenge of creating work for the vast space inside the Indianapolis Museum of Art's Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion.
The site-specific sculpture is the latest in a series of commissioned installations for the pavilion made possible by a $2.5 million grant from the Efroymson Family Fund, which was established in 2007.
"I was struck by the glass, the frames and the windows," said Rowe, 39, about the pavilion. "So I started thinking about a piece that had a lot to do with those elements."
Living up to its title, "Tenuous Arrangements" complements the interior, but skews it comfortably enough that upon entering the museum visitors will experience discord from the obstructed sense of space confronting them.
They can walk through her sculpture as well, but not touch. Though immobile, the illusion of movement exists. "It has a kind of threshold . . . there's actually an entrance in a sense, but it's at an angle, so you have to find it," said Rowe.
She wants visitors to approach, revisit and move around her piece with discovery.
"It asks a bit of the viewer. How do you remember spaces? What's the psychological relationship to space around us? I'm hoping it pulls those thoughts."
Three subtle color schemes -- lavender, blue and yellow -- inspired by Robert Altman's 1977 film "Three Women," are meant to represent different moods or characters mirroring the film's dreamy sentiment.
"I feel like I was really getting into the colors and tones," Rowe said. "I used to be a painter, so I feel like that was coming back in this piece more. I use color for very specific associations, but this became more of a painterly investigation."
Allison Unruh, assistant curator of contemporary art at the IMA, is excited about how visitors will interact and negotiate the work.
"It's something that has a real physical immediacy that can draw people in, but it's also so conceptually sophisticated that it works on this whole other level.
Tenuous Arrangements - http://heatherrowestudio.com/#/tenuous-arrangements/
Heather Rowe, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Newfields, Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion, IMA, sculpture, contemporary art, Allison Unrah, Robert Altman ,Three Women, Brooklyn, New York, Tenuous arrangements
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