Mapping the Dark: A Museum of Ambient Disorders originated as a
gallery installation by the artist, Rosamond Casey, at the McGuffey Art
Center in Charlottesville, Virginia in March 2003. The artist has
created ten works of visual fiction, which are ‘collaborations’ with
imaginary characters. The works are psychological portraits that begin
with the ‘art’ or visual material her characters have left behind as a
residue of a peculiar turn of mind: a worry, a craving, a secret wish or
loss.
A Museum of Ambient Disorders is a collection of a collection of
books, photographs, collages, sculptures, and paintings. Each piece
suggests, through narrative clues and the urgency of the character’s
mark, the conditions which have driven each individual to produce the
work exhibited. The artist plays the role of collector and curator in
addition to straddling the line between self and other.
Placed around the gallery space are small black and white photographs
alluding to the characters. The viewer is invited to draw connections
between the artwork and the elusive identities in the photographs and to
examine the possibility of relationships between characters.
In addition to the individual works, the artist has produced a
limited first edition of 45 leather-bound
clamshell boxes each containing ten volumes, which fold out into a
narrative display of each character’s work.
