Rachel Garrard: Borderline

Tanja Grunert Gallery, curated by Mitra Khorasheh

23 February – 15 April 2017

For her third solo exhibition at Tanja Grunert Gallery, Rachel Garrard has created a new series of paintings made during a recent residency in the Yucatán in Mexico. Exploring organic materials and colors of the surrounding nature, Garrard created her own selection of natural dyes from a variety of plants such as berries, herbs, spices, vegetables and algae. Garrard experiments with the material properties of her earthly pigments through an alchemical and process-oriented approach, infusing her paintings with transformative as well as performative qualities. Using a silk weave cotton fabric, she applies the plant dyes in rectangular layers, creating abstract compositions as the pigments seep into the fabric, staining and bleeding out into soft and slightly blurred forms. The plant-based dyes gently fade after their first application, leaving a subtle, subdued palette of organic hues: camomile yellows, hibiscus pinks, algae greens, purple cabbage blues, and raspberry reds. The paintings are the remnants of an orchestrated process that is both precise and unpredictable—a process of transformation.

With this new series of paintings, Garrard’s engagement with natural materials is informed by an inner journey and process: the paintings transport the viewer to the borderline where materiality gives way to the inner qualities of nature. Substance is reduced to frequency and vibration. Each composition becomes a tunnel or doorway into a different tonal frequency, which is reflected in the work’s title. The series thus evokes a sensory exploration that seeks to capture the essence of nature by blurring the distinction between materiality and immateriality.

–Mitra Khorasheh