Room Behavior

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Rob Kovitz has assembled a collage of short snippets of text and murky
photos around the theme of rooms. A room, according to one quote, is
“a matter of opinion.” Or maybe it is “adjustable scenery for the
soul.” His portraits of rooms show them as places of terror, insanity,
poverty, sickness, triteness, sex, and death. “Room and tomb, tomb and
womb, womb and room” is the way Kovitz puts his theme into words.

There’s a 1960s-style stream-of-consciousness quality to the work. We
know that it is supposed to be profound, to capture and communicate the
ultimate truth about rooms. We also know we’ve been had.

Kovitz did his research in classical and modern literature, the Bible,
and dozens of miscellaneous media sources. He dredges up a lot of stuff
that sounds as it if should mean something. But don’t look too
closely. The emperor’s new clothes look a lot like a room.