The Rotunda Gallery, 33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights, presents Locations an exhibition investigating the unique challenges urban life presents. Organized by guest curators Susanna Cole and Erin Donnelly, Locations opens on Thursday, September 5 with an artists’ reception and will remain on view through October 18. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday, Noon - 5 PM and Saturday, 11 AM - 4 PM. Admission is free. Information: 718-875-4047; or www.brooklynX.org/rotunda.

The dense fabric of urban life creates shared mental landscapes in which we locate our selves. On a daily basis we negotiate and renegotiate the boundaries of public and private space. We carve out individual identities while functioning within a multiplicity of group affiliations — from smaller communal environments such as our office or neighborhood to larger metropolitan arenas.

The artist has long been recognized as an observer and commentator on the urban context, reflecting on its capacity to shape internal experiences. In Locations artists explore the internalization of the conditions of public life, the reconfiguration of the dichotomy between public and private life and the role of the artist in consideration of these relationships. The exhibition includes work that considers the individual as isolated in the midst of community as well as work that plays with the scale of urban architecture.

Since September 11th New Yorkers in particular have become more sensitive to the relationship between the self and the city, to the meanings embedded in specific locations as well as to the role of place in our understanding of our individual identities. As proposals for a memorial are being reviewed, New Yorkers find themselves reflecting on the civic and symbolic potentials of space. Opening on September 5, 2002, Locations has an additional relevance and will resonate with New Yorkers on a variety of levels.

Locations artists include:

Eric Brown whose sculptural appropriations are crafted from discarded building materials, transformed aluminum siding from surface sheathing to structural elements.

Sara Eichner whose intimate paintings chronicle the experience of navigating the city, focusing on the smallest details of our architectural environment.

Sally Gutierrez’s series of short videos documents New Yorkers in their home environments and explores the boundaries between external and internal space.

Jeff Konigsburg will create a site-specific drywall relief map of the architectural schematics of Brooklyn buildings and the gallery itself from a variety of perspectives.

Franziska Lamprecht’s computer collage breaks down the concept of unified identity. Employing strategies of surveillance and digital technology, Lamprecht follows strangers through stores and slices this footage with imagined interiors they might inhabit.

In Camille Norment’s installation viewers enter the garden of a Brooklyn brownstone where they can watch the appearance and disappearance of bodies in the windows.

Heidi Schlatter’s large-scale digital photos of familiar low-rent urban architecture reference conceptual photography and minimal sculpture.

Daniel Zeller’s intricate abstract graphite drawings evoke densely embedded and mysterious terrains that simultaneously present micro and macro space.