Jehoshua Rozenman – Circular ashes (2019)

Many associations come to mind when looking at the work Circular ashes, 2.5 metres tall and weighing almost 300 kilos, which the Israeli artist, based both in Amsterdam and Berlin, Jehoshua Rozenman (b. 1955) created for DELIRIOUS. Broken industrial machines stacked on top of one another and welded together. An enormous lump of solid marble to which someone has taken a chisel and an angle grinder. Part of a ruin from an unknown civilization. An indefinable piece of metallic space debris. A meteorite. It resembles all kinds of things and yet is quite clearly none of them. Rozenman’s sculptures are elusive, enigmatic and deceptive. They are also dark, opaque and non-reflective. Simultaneously expressionist and mechanical, abstract and yet also alluding to human forms. They appear to be made of steel or stone, but are in fact made of glass.

A decade ago, Rozenman made the move from paint and more traditional sculpting materials to glass. He works with the ‘lost wax’ technique, a casting technique that is normally used for casting bronze, silver and copper and which he has succeeded in transferring to the casting of glass. This unique, very complex and time-consuming process results in forms that show a combination of sharp, angular edges with wavy lines, indentations and cavities. But step away and look at them from another side or in another light and a completely different image presents itself. In an opening, polished work becomes visible, a translucent part suddenly lights up, while another section gleams.

For Rozenman, glass functions as a metaphor for life: tough and fragile at the same time. It can fall apart at any moment, but can also last for ages. He gives shape to his own thoughts in works that are created somewhat intuitively, coming to him on his walks through the city. This is where Rozenman finds his inspiration, in all kinds of objects and constructions from the contemporary urban landscape, which have connotations with social or political histories and with events from our collective memory.