Rachel Harrison’s heavily textured, expressionist painting is electrified by fuchsia shorts, a dramatic punctuation at the end of the artwork. The shorts drag a potentially intellectual AbExp artwork into the banality of everyday life; now, it’s not hard to imagine the artwork on its way to the beach or the mall. (In ‘Feedback’ at Marlborough Contemporary through August 11th).
Rachel Harrison’s latest solo show at Greene Naftali Gallery seems to step away from the overt politics of her most recent shows, instead questioning the value and role of art (as presented in an imagined conversation between several famous artworks featured in a gallery handout). In this piece, what appears to be a bald eagle in a bandana is held at gunpoint, a symbol of power reduced to a captive state as the color of money dominates. (In Chelsea through Jun 17th).
Last November, a former guard at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio entered the Center shortly after it opened, shooting and spray painting artworks before killing himself. Rachel Harrison’s sculpture ‘Valid Like Salad,’ which features a portrait of Al Pacino in Scarface and indirectly questions who we validate as heroes, was one of the targeted artworks. Now on display at Greene Naftali Gallery, it is a chilling witness to our current epidemic of gun violence. (In Chelsea through June 18th).
American folk tradition inspired Matthew Marks Gallery’s summer group show ‘Roving Signs,’ which includes this editioned sculpture by Rachel Harrison that conjures apple picking over Apple Macs and can-do crafting over mass consumption. (At Matthew Marks Gallery’s 522 W. 22nd St space through Aug 16th).
Rachel Harrison, Apple Multiple, artificial fruit and sewing pins, 2008.
