Regan Rosburg

Golden paint, appliques, dumpster.

6 × 5 × 6 feet

2026

My journey of making this piece introduced me to people working in blue-collar jobs… waste management, steel workers, and contractors. I heard many stories of how the rising prices had squeezed them, leaving some of them feeling disillusioned, left behind, and worried about the future.

The gold appliqués are close replicas of the first two golden appliqués Trump put on the hearth in the Oval Office. The exhibition, timed during the lead-up to and after the US midterm elections, critiques the systems of corruption that have allowed for such wealth disparity in America. The president promised we would all become “so rich,” but really he meant the wealthiest would continue to consolidate power, resources, and democratic institutions.

So rich, indeed.

THE NEW GILDED AGE

My current body of work explores the fact that we are now deeply entrenched in a new “Gilded Age.” This term, repeatedly mentioned in US presidential speeches in 2025, historically references a time in American history between 1860 to 1890. While it is meant to signal an idealistic return to a time of prosperity, the reality is much more complex and dark.

HISTORY

During the first “Gilded Age,” the US experienced massive upheaval. Wealthy businessmen — John D. Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and others — were able to amass great wealth using exploitative business practices in their industries. In addition, they were ruthless in their treatment of the land — further perpetuating the caustic idea that man and nature are not only separate, but also that man has dominion over it (Manifest Destiny).

The term “Gilded Age” came to be known in 1873 when Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published their novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Gilding is when a thin layer of gold is applied over a cheaper, less precious surface. Their novel was a critique of wealth accumulation and exploitative practices, highlighting the fake aristocracy that barely covered the criminal behavior hiding just below the surface.

CURRENT EVENTS

Ironically, and as if made for TV, the leader of the US has once again been promoting this ideology. Decisions have, quite literally, metastasized the same ever-widening wealth gap and natural resource extraction that embodied the first Gilded Age.

Now, however, the stakes are higher: climate change is upon us, mass migration due to conflict and dwindling resources is becoming a political reality, and ecosystems are collapsing. In 2025, the gilding has taken the form of corporations (AI, surveillance, tech, extraction, pharmaceuticals) showing incomprehensible profits — pushing them further away from the reality that the rest of the globe faces.

In the original Gilded Age, the “robber barons” (wealthy elites) gave back in the form of philanthropy. However, today’s elites enjoy the collective social mania Guy Debord warned of in his 1967 book, Society of the Spectacle. The dichotomy between the humble, fragile wonders of nature and the gilded, gawdy, distraction-extraction culture has never been more glaring.

MATERIALS AND PROCESS

Many pieces in this body of work utilize close replicas of the gilded baroque embellishments found all over the current White House. Most of these embellishments were purchased at my local Home Depot, and the “gilded” look was re-created with paint.

Other works in this body also encorporate natural elements, such as stumps found on the land where I grew up in Colorado, sawdust from a local sawmill, moss, and the smell of petrichor. These elements represent the relentless evolution of life on earth, as well as its ability to erase the past.

In LAND GRAB, the appliques have been photographed on site while hiking in state, national, and provincial parks — which are now threatened by WH policies and private developers.

American flag, resin, gold paint, applique pieces (as seen in the White House).

15 × 12 × 5 feet.

2026

This site-specific installation was created for the New Gilded Age exhibition. American flags have long been used as political commentary in artworks. I chose to create this monolithic presentation, hung facing the viewer, to speak to the banners that have been hung on the Department of Justice, Agriculture, and Education.

The flag has been drenched in 24 karat like paint, and is sagging from the weight of the gold appliques. As they melt onto the floor, the piece looks both decadent and discusting.

This fakery of wealth is emblematic of President Trump, the wealthy donors and elites he supports, and the mockery that has been made of the American experiment. Rather than benefitting the people of the country, America has been treated like his personal trophy — along with the land, institutions, ideals, and attention that he plunders.

Ink on wall

25 feet x 1 ft

One of the central ideas of this exhibition is connecting the idea of the New Gilded Age in America to the theories of Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle.” A French philosopher of the 20th century, Debord noted that while two means of control existed (the “diffuse” and the “concentrated” — capitalism and political force, respectively), America had done something by the 1980’s that other countries hadn’t: it had integrated the two forms. The “integrated spectacle” uses both means of control: coercion, desire, consumer goods, as well as surveillance, secrecy, and concentrated regulations around governing.

This piece presents the argument that the integrated spectacle has reached a fever pitch under the Trump administration. As a president who relies on media, constant distraction, and spectacles (grand displays of wealth, televised executions, and cage fights, and relentless posts on social media), citizens feel overwhelmed and exhausted. Our love for limitless consumer goods has contributed to the disastrous reality of climate change and pollution — but the government ratchets up the spectacle rather than address the causes of the global polycrisis.

To read the full version of this manifesto, click “Essay” on the main navigation bar.

Vaporizer, petrichor scent. 2026.

When one enters the exhibition, they are surrounded by the smell of rain (petrichor).

The smell of rain is 450 million years old and comes from a soil bacterium. Combined with plant fatty acids and ozone, it creates a mixture that is unmistakable to most humans. In fact, we can pick up on the main chemical in smaller amounts than sharks can pick up on blood in the water.

The scent is a powerful contrast to the large gilded works. People respond differently to the scent; for some, it is unmistakable, for others it is something faint that they cannot place. Petrichor is part of our evolutionary memory, but also will bring back memories of “home.” As a counterpoint to the narrative of greed and fake opulence in the exhibition, the rain scent provides an anchoring reminder that we are part of a longer, beautiful story on Earth.

To learn more, or to purchase a bottle of my rain scent, visit https://www.yesterdays-rain.com/

(pron: hiss-ter-EE-sis)

Video. 2026.

Hysteresis is a physics term. In relation to climate change, it means that the state of the Earth's climate depends not only on current conditions (such as carbon dioxide levels or temperature), but also on its past history and the direction it took to get there. (Wikipedia). It is easier to understand this using the metaphor of a thermostat: if a room is 80 and one wants it to be 70, the system will need to cool itself beyond the set temperature, dropping to 69 or lower in order to hit the target and stay there.

In the case of ice sheets, it would need to go past the point of stopping warming and into the historically cool temperatures of when the ice was formed.

In thinking about this theme, I was struck by the complexity of actually getting our climate to recover. We have lost so much ice, and the conditions for it to form took millions of years.

Massive, progressive, and relentless actions will need to be taken in order to reset the thermostat. The interconnectedness of our planetary systems means vast and complicated feedback loops. The inaction of ten/twenty/one hundred years ago is causing the rising temperatures of today — what will the inaction of today yield ten years from now?

We are on a timeline of planetary memory that is not only ancient but also moving forward. Our past and present governments’ failure to act shows up in all aspects of our ecosystems, social systems, political systems, and humanity.

Footage taken while in the Arctic Circle, 2024. Running time 6:31

The Way is the Way

Ponderosa pine tree, moss, sawdust, appliques, paint

6 × 3 × 3 feet

Ancestor

Ponderosa pine tree, moss, sawdust

4 × 3 × 3 feet

Installation dimensions with moss: 10 × 10 × 2 feet

The Way is the Way

Ponderosa pine tree, moss, sawdust, appliques, paint

6 × 3 × 3 feet

Ancestor

Ponderosa pine tree, moss, sawdust

4 × 3 × 3 feet

Installation dimensions with moss: 10 × 10 × 2 feet

The Way is the Way (detail)

Ponderosa pine tree, moss, sawdust, appliques, paint

6 × 3 × 3 feet

Installation dimensions with moss: 10 × 10 × 2 feet

Collage with 1965 maps of Antarctica, gold paint pen.

36 × 28”

2025

Back in 1965, a team of scientists compiled 10 folios of Antarctic data for the American Geographical Society. From this remote, untouched wilderness, they recorded everything: ocean current salinity, ice thickness, dissolved carbon dioxide, and even the bryophyte plant life in the Antarctic summer months. These archives were made by men and women without an agenda, only in search of the truth. And now, the documents and data points serve as a bulwark to the corrosive denial and propaganda of our time.

Quite often, as a studio practice, I will pull out one of these heroic data maps and write "everything is fine, is everything fine, everything is fine" over and over again. I do this to deal with the cruel, imbecilic leaders who value profits over life on Earth.

On February 12, 2026, the Trump administration casually erased the laws that kept greenhouse gas regulations in check, refuting the collective scientific consensus of 99% of global scientists. This is a moronic travesty of epic proportions. "Everything is fine" is a double-entendre of our collective experience: the phrase both calms and betrays our anxiety. While my government tells me to deny my reality, these maps help me honor the brilliant, uncorrupted, undisputed, heroic, adventurous, and gentle scientists. They embodied a pure curiosity to understand our world, to trust our eyes and ears, to be present, to learn, and -- ultimately -- to remember.

Appliques photographed in Rocky Mountain National Park

2025

Manifest Destiny

Plastic, spray paint, glue, American flag, flag pole.

84 × 24 × 90 inches

2025

According to US flag code, the flag has many rules. In practice, they are more suggestions and traditions; they are not enforced by law. Even flag burning is protected under the First Amendment, as ruled in 1990 by the US Supreme Court (due, in part, to the pivotal work by the artist Dread Scott).

The flag represents a “living country” and thus is considered a “living thing.” Sometimes, it is treated with utter respect and dignity. Other times, we hardly notice it being used to sell hot dogs, toilet paper, and beer — all of which are against flag code.

The flag means patriotism to some, and patriotic betrayal to others. It means hope and possibility to some, and corporate greed to others. It means freedom to some, and oppression, genocide, and hypocrisy to others.

I created this work considering the paradox of “patriotism” that the flag embodies, seeing it as both a personified main character and a simultaneous bystander throughout its history. Respectfully, I did not want to harm, tear, or burn this flag. I did, however, create an uncomfortable situation. This work points to the historic vein of entitlement that has — in the new Gilded Age — grown even more gruesomely vulgar.

The original title of this work was When You’re a Star, They Let You Do It.