Visions of a Future Dream

Hexton Gallery

June 15th –  July 10th, 2023

Visions of a Future Dream is Rachel Garrard’s first solo show in Aspen with Hexton Gallery. The exhibition presents a collection of new paintings, integrated with a site-specific sculpture.

Garrard’s multifaceted practice articulates a view of reality in which the border between the physical and ephemeral is porous and ever-shifting. Through subtle abstractions she charts energetic and psychic states and their impact on and interaction with the physical plane. Referencing philosophical, scientific and cultural theory with her own deep psychogenic exploration, she has developed a symbolic language and sacred geometry that intimately connects the internal with the cosmic and universal.

The paintings reveal inner structures of the external world: rocks, personally collected by the artist, are hand-ground and applied to raw linen canvas through a process of fine layering to create translucent washes of colour. The canvas becomes a physical register of place, a palimpsest of past experiences and a portal to the metaphysical landscape of memory.

‘Cartographies’ is a looming steel sculpture that occupies the central gallery space. Integrating space and territory, Garrard has assembled found objects from the surrounding landscape, reimagining the natural world in contrast to a symbolic steel structure in which they are held. The artist encourages us to see the natural world anew, capturing the essence of the local terrain while encouraging contemplative journeys within.