Rachel Harrison: Assorted Varieties
@ Corbett vs. Dempsey
2156 W Fulton St, Chicago, IL 60612
On view through Saturday, January 8th
Corbett vs. Dempsey is pleased to present Assorted Varieties, an exhibition of new work by Rachel Harrison. This is the gallery’s first solo show with Harrison and the artist’s first gallery presentation in Chicago.
In Assorted Varieties, Harrison unveils four major sculptures and three wall works. Of these large-scale pieces, three are in theory monochromatic – red, blue, and yellow – however their variegated hues almost chide the idea of the monochrome, revealing a subtle pandemonium of hues and temperatures residing in craggy surfaces, torqued volumes, and inset objects. The wall works roughly map onto the color scheme of the sculptures, recast in three different media – a set of post-it notes, an enigmatic abstract photograph (titled “Photograph”), and a blown-up screen grab of a frozen cherry pie with associated Tweet. Everything in Harrison’s artistic ecosystem is buzzing with latent meaning – nothing is arbitrary, but nothing is obvious.
Since emerging on the international art scene in the early 1990s, New York-based artist Rachel Harrison has built a critically incisive oeuvre consisting of work in a variety of media. As art historian David Joselit has succinctly written, she “makes sculptures that defy description.” Harrison, who was the subject of an acclaimed survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2019, is most widely known for her sculptural work, which is both masterful and irreverent and which incorporates an ingenious formal sense within an apparent (but illusory) defiance of formalism. The work is sensuous and strategic, serious and uproarious, self-referential and wildly omnivorous, ranging across historical points of reference, both those of an art-specific nature and those drawn from popular and mass culture.
Corbett vs. Dempsey is open Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm. Appointments via Tock are encouraged but walk-ins are welcome. Face coverings are required for all guests.
Image: Rachel Harrison, Legendary Red, 2021, wood, steel, polystyrene, cement, cardboard, chicken wire, wool blanket, acrylic, and Rice Chex cereal box, Part 1: 96 x 44 x 36 inches, Part 2: 2 1/2 x 48 x 51 inches. Courtesy of the artist, Greene Naftali, New York, and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago. Photo: Tim Nighswander / IMAGING4ART.
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