One System, One Thousand Times, 2015-present

Muslin, fabric dye, plaster, kitchen table

installed dimensions variable.

Excerpt from the Ground Floor: A Biennial Exhibition of New Art From Chicago 2016 Catalog, “Footnotes For Fragments, The Improvisers” written by Tempestt Hazel.

Tempestt Hazel is a curator, writer, artist advocate, and founding editor of Sixty Inches From Center, a Chicago-based online arts publication, archiving initiative, and cultural platform.

“Sara Rouse’s One System, One Thousand Times breathes. You may not notice it because it doesn’t have the usual indicators. It doesn’t expand or contract as it takes in air. It breathes with the subtly of plants or our planet, and like all living things it grows, evolves, and adapts. It has scars— the table it sits on is weathered and scratched, and there are traces of fingerprints and broom bristles in the blue dust. It has a memory— with each new iteration it’s collecting residue from the people and objects it interacts with to bring forward into its future forms. Rouse considers the different ways color can be held in materials as a way of speaking to the constant state of flux that living things are in and the systems that are naturally created within them. Plaster, fabric, and water have all been keepers of the chalky blue pigment that has taken over her color palette. When absorbing this color, the materials softly point back to the environment and sensations like blue bodies of water, a clear blue sky, or the ice blue color of coldness, all of which are important to how earthly, otherworldly, and celestial systems live and breathe. With each occurrence, her living sculpture is a fresh reminder that we are all just a series of complex systems that rely on one another to endure.”