Rachel Garrard: Vessel

Tanja Grunert Gallery, curated by Mitra Khorasheh

September 7 – October 19, 2014

The exhibition will feature sculptural work, durational performances, a video projection and recent paintings and drawings. The selection of works considers notions of visibility, impermanence, interconnectedness and essence, using the body as a vessel of transformation through which consciousness can be explored.

The pursuit into the transcendent dimension of the self, to question reality, place oneself within the context of the universe, is the subjective and contemplative journey Rachel Garrard has chosen to take with her form of expression. Through an intimate and introspective practice, Garrard uses her own body – its physicality and true geometric proportions – as the starting point in an exploration into the essence of existence; a personal quest for Truth. When making representations of the body, for Garrard it is always in relation to the universe: “I see the human body as a microcosm, a seed encompassing all the geometric and geodesic measures of the cosmos, as a container for something infinite.”

Garrard’s formal language and artistic development owes much to her personal evolution and upbringing. Raised in a family of scientists, her existential inquiries are pervaded by an insistence on research and reason. As a result, she has created her own unique sensual aesthetic in which the spiritual and empirical comfortably co-exist. She courageously blends, re-works and re-combines genres, draws from diverse ancient and contemporary cultures, scientific concepts and substances, the result yielding a multidisciplinary body of work that ranges nomadically across practices and transcends mediums to include performance, painting, drawing, video and sculpture.

Throughout the course of the exhibition, Garrard will carry out durational performances in which she will lie in a fetal position within a vessel , a temporary structure seemingly housing the physical body as the body temporarily houses the soul. When the artist is no longer present, the sculpture will embody her residual form, questioning the presence left in absence.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, featuring an essay by Dr. Kathy Battista, and forward by the exhibition curator Mitra Khorasheh.