Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Ella Rose Flood
American; 21st-century
Chicago, IL: Bodenrader (Exhibition: Ella Rose Flood: Container and Last Display)
60%
Keys. 2025. Victorian button hook, keys, ball chain, plastic tag, label
This assemblage was installed in a solo exhibition of mostly paintings and some large-ish found-object sculpture-things. It was the smallest piece in the show, jabbed into the wall in the space between a few pictures and a hulking, busy floor piece. It would be improper to talk about it as a completely standalone work, as so much of its humble success has to do with the way it articulates the emptiness between the more forthright artworks around it. A whole room of these things wouldn't work, nor would just this on its own, but with enough other disparate artworks to differentiate itself against, this little ensemble gets to seem necessary and eerily vanishing, though not slight. This reliance on its curated context isn't incidental to the piece, but rather is an aspect of its overall form. That's an aesthetic liability, but it's also fundamental to what this thing is and how it works. Finally, despite the fact that it's not in any simple sense a "sculpture," this piece does possess a certain sculptural handsomeness that's crucial to its installational success. Those pendant keys, for instance, are stiffly parallel to the wall but also unfixed in their relation to it (they could swing); this resolves the oblique angle of the button hook, and it also brings the wall itself into the artwork's aesthetic remit. (TFS, 2025)