ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce Golden Hour, a solo exhibition of new painting and sculpture by Jessie Edelman in Galleries One and Two. The exhibition continues through Saturday, April 11, 2020. With her newest series of paintings, Edelman continues her poetic investigation of solitude and the female gaze, while expanding her palette and mise en scène. Edelman’s female figures, mostly seen from behind and implicating the viewer in their veiled perspective, are found in both interior and exterior locations— resting in brightly adorned rooms, pausing in lush gardens, reclining poolside in the afternoon sun. They are often alone or solitary, but also occasionally hand in hand with a partner or looking across the pictorial space at another. They appear to be day dreaming, lost in thought or caught in a heightened sensory experience with their surroundings. The spaces they occupy are dynamic and rich with detail, but also limn a sense of contemplation, longing and mystery. These gentle scenes open up a potential interior space for the artist’s women occupying them, suggesting introspection and a deeper reality. The possibilities of dramatic allusion within the painting’s pictorial plane are essential for the viewer. We are simultaneously placed within the painting’s action and on the periphery of its frame. We are invited in as voyeurs. Edelman builds worlds, visiting places she longs to go. Her favorite paintings are those that she desires to jump inside, and her work makes this same visually indulgent offer to the viewer. Golden Hour describes the warm colors of the sky just after daybreak and right before sunset. The artist’s new paintings capture this effect by employing a rich palette with a concentration on deep reds, fiery oranges and gleaming ochres. An aureate haze is caste throughout this body of work, seeming to protract time. Edelman also presents new sculptures in Gallery Two. Three figures cast in bronze recline in their own garden-like space festooned with plants. Extending the narrative of their corresponding paintings, they seem to leap from their painterly confines into the gallery itself.

JESSIE EDELMAN (American, b. 1986) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2013. She had solo exhibitions at Denny Dimin Gallery (New York, NY) and Robert Blumenthal (New York, NY) and a two-person exhibition (with David Humphrey) at The Suburban (Milwaukee, WI). Recent group exhibitions include 0.0 Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Dirimart (Istanbul, Turkey), Paula Estey Gallery (Newburyport, MA), Bahamas Biennale (Detroit, MI), Anahita Art Gallery (Tehran, Iran), and Circuit 12 Contemporary (Dallas, TX). She has recently exhibited at art fairs in Miami and San Francisco. Her work has been reviewed or featured in i-D Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Vice, Brooklyn Magazine, Artnet News, and Vogue. This is her second solo exhibition with the gallery.

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Tags: andrew rafacz, Chicago, Golden Hour, Jessie Edelman, West Town