Rachel Garrard: Hidden Light

Tanja Grunert Gallery, curated by Mitra Khorasheh

27 February – 25 March 2016

Tanja Grunert Gallery in pleased to announce its inaugural show in Chelsea with Hidden Light, a solo exhibition by Rachel Garrard. The exhibition will feature three distinct, but related series of paintings. The work explores visibility, light and perception, revealing a contemplative internal methodology in which process and materiality unite to reveal a hidden light.

These new works continue Garrard’s existential quest—an inward journey that alludes to the depths beyond the physical. Her artistic practice is one steeped in process, her choice of materials, embedded with significance, and her creations, a journey in and of itself. Her own physicality and bodily proportions act as a palimpsest for her geometrically angular forms—triangles that are, at once, harmonious and opposing. Her faded hues and organic palette are derived from found materials collected on her travels, which she refines into pigment. She uses these homemade dyes to stain, layer, create shadows, and light and depth; the paintings echo their transformative undertaking. The Peaks that only I can see are created from ash collected from the remains of the ceremonial fire of a Temascal, a native Mesoamerican ritual of cleansing, purifying and rebirth. The Residual paintings use fire to burn and mark the canvas. The works retain the traces of fire and smoke in the alchemical act of transformation. In After your glow, the colors employed are derived from pigment made from grinding and refining various rocks the artist gathered during her trips to remote geological sites in the Andes Mountains. For Garrard, it is vital to use natural colors from places that have inspired the work, further embedding the paintings with a sense of place and meaning.

Although, different in medium and form, like siblings, the paintings share an origin—holding the same secrets, capturing a hidden essence. The paintings are extensions of one another, each completing and pouring into the next, uncovering layers of depth and light. Essentially, they are extensions of the artist herself. Garrard’s Hidden Light is a result of an inward practice, a voyage that begins with a vision, then travels and collects, containing the intimacy of introspection and meditation, the grinding, the watering down, the painting, the washing and the drying. The final result is paintings that are personal, intelligent, and experiential, that uncover inner reflections as they hold the residue of their creation. The interlocking compositions reflect structures that are universal, while their color and substance evoke a visceral and visual experience—an ephemeral exchange between intimate subjectivity and the timeless eternal. Through her paintings, Garrard invites the viewers to experience her thoughts and experimentations, slowly transcending the limits of painting, achieving meaning in and beyond their medium.