Moving in Place at the Miami Art Museum

Susan Rothenberg’s Moving in Place exhibition at the Miami Art Museum was indeed moving. Rothenberg magnifies the in-between space that separates opposing ideas through recurring motifs. Within her self-referential horse paintings such as Cabin Fever, 1976, she depicts a faceless horse in the middle than life canvas. The animal confuses by viewer by moving in place, suspended between gallops with its front and back legs in the air. Although there is an implied motion as seen within the horse’s body position, and the lack of details (the horse is faceless), the image is simultaneously frozen in time. Along with the figure, the paint handling also implies a static motion. The all over paint application struggles to describe something through layers of paint. The result is an ephemeral background that suggests depth while also reminding the viewer of the flat picture plane.

Among other works, I was drawn to Rothenberg’s animal chase series. Dogs Killing Rabbit, 1991-92, depicts longs legs, presumably belonging to the dog next to its prey’s red remains. The white of the snow is a striking ground to the red hues and the scene is poetically shocking but not explicit. In fact, the viewer is denied access to the animals’ faces, in a way preventing any humanization and presenting only its instinctual drive to kill.

Other works such as The Chase, 1999, imply more overt movement illuminated by a painterly white background. The Chase illustrates blurred shapes to represent dogs running after a clever rabbit, which has escaped action and left the dogs to chase themselves. As within Cabin Fever, The Chase suggests something larger. By slowing down the frenzy and suspending the motion of gallops, Rothenberg invites the viewer to catch a glimpse into otherwise inaccessible moments. This new gaze stabilizes the invisible transitions within continual moment thereby reframing the movement and deconstructing/ reconstructing the scene.