SPLIT IMPULSE: Iris Bernblum + Heather Rowe
June 5- July 31
Split Impulse brings together the work of Heather Rowe and Iris Bernblum in an exhibition that probes the unstable ground between what is seen and what is felt, what is real and what is performed. Rowe’s work occupies a space at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, and installation – aiming to create a cinematic and tactile experience which is simultaneously desirable and unsettling. She mines mysterious phenomena through materiality and form, questioning existing power dynamics with confrontational and spectral presences. Bernblum works across disciplines to examine the systems that shape identity under contemporary capitalism. She holds a mirror to systems that know you perhaps better than you know yourself; the eerie accuracy of the algorithm, the self reflected back in slightly distorted form. Together, their work traces concerns with the self, reflection, voyeurism, and the body and in Split Impulse, they put forth a shared preoccupation: the suspicion that the self, like the image, is not quite what it appears to be on the outside.
Iris Bernblum is a cross-disciplinary, conceptually based artist. She explores ideas around human nature, power and vulnerability, focusing primarily on the way we frame our sense of self regarding our current capitalist culture and its commodification of nearly every natural impulse. More recently Bernblum has been looking closely at what she calls “algorithmic mirroring” as a kind of radically honest self-portraiture. Bernblum has shown at venues including Aspect/Ratio Gallery, The Arts Club, Goldfinch Projects, Terrain Exhibitions, and Weinberg/Newton Gallery in Chicago, Illinois; The Brooklyn International Film Festival, September Gallery, Artist’s Space, and The Elizabeth Foundation in New York, New York; The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bernblum received her MFA from Columbia University in New York and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. irisbernblum.com
Heather Rowe is a New York–based artist who received her MFA from Columbia University. She has exhibited in numerous institutions including MoMA PS1, Artists Space, and White Columns in New York, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, as well as in galleries such as D’Amelio Terras and James Cohan Gallery in New York, Galerie Zink in Berlin, and Ballroom Marfa in Texas. In 2008, her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial. Other projects include Beyond the Hedges (Slivered Gazebo) at Socrates Sculpture Park (2013) and Construction House at the Providence College Galleries (2020). Rowe presented work in conversation with Christina Ramberg at Heroes Gallery in New York (2022), and she was included in the MassArt Art Museum’s exhibition The Myth of Normal: A Celebration of Authentic Expression (2023–24). In 2025 she presented a solo exhibition, An Other Presence, at VERY Gallery, Boston, MA. Rowe was awarded an FST StudioProject Fund grant in 2024, was an Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome April-May 2025, and won a NYSCA grant, sponsored by Protocinema in 2025. heatherrowestudio.com