Rachel Harrison: Consider the Lobster

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
June 27—December 30, 2009

Working as Assistant Curator to Tom Eccles, Executive Director of The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) and the Hessel Museum of Art, Consider the Lobster presents the first major survey of New York based artist Rachel Harrison. Titled after an essay by the late David Foster Wallace, this exhibition encompasses over ten years of large-scale installations by Harrison, all reconfigured for the CCS Bard galleries, as well as a number of autonomous sculptural and photographic works. Consider the Lobster is a collaboration with Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, where it will be on view April 27—June 20, 2010.

Including the following installations and works (texts excerpted from exhibition guide):

Rachel Harrison, Car Stereo Parkway, 2005, installation view, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Car Stereo Parkway, 2005
The brash coloring of a series of sculptures—abstractions reminiscent of television consoles, end-tables, and other consumer display systems—finds unruly counterparts in a collage of vintage concert footage from the `70s glam rock band KISS, multicolored foil bunting (a hallmark of celebrations and used car lots around the world), and other conspicuous barriers. First shown at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland—replete with a janitor’s broom and Rastafarian cap with fake dreadlocks—Car Stereo Parkway offers a haywire assortment of failed theatricality and contrasting social economies.

Rachel Harrison, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 2007, Mannequin, latex Dick Cheney mask, cornstarch biodegradable peanuts, Flo-pak regular and heavy-duty peanuts, eyeglasses, and athletic wear, 67” x 90” x 33”, installation view with Trees for the Forest, 2007, Migros Museum, Zurich, courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 2007
Titled after the irrepressible German filmmaker and author, a Janus-faced mannequin opposes the staid visage of retail culture with the ghoulish latex add-on of a Dick Cheney mask. Masculine and feminine are collapsed into a discomfiting hybrid of spectacle. Politics as representative government and leisurewear readily commingle atop a sea of packing peanuts.

Rachel Harrison, Performance, 2008, Wood, polystyrene, Parex, cement, acrylic, sheepskin, Charles Mayton abstract painting, Pat Palermo Greek head painting, Halsey Rodman pedestal, and Martha Rosler crate , 85 x 36 x 36”, courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Performance, 2008
Having come across a fine art packing crate with Martha Rosler’s name and the title “Performance” written on it, Harrison invited two former students to collaborate in making a sculpture that would incorporate both the found object and the reference to Rosler as an artist that readily employs performative and documentary strategies. Assigned to either side of a pedestal perched atop the crate, Harrison asked each of her collaborators to create an image that would represent one side of an age-old aesthetic opposition, namely abstract and figurative painting. Layered together with Harrison’s own painting and sculptural interventions, Performance explores whether once fraught art world divisions hold any tension in today’s culture of appropriation and simulation.

Rachel Harrison, Performance, 2008, Wood, polystyrene, Parex, cement, acrylic, sheepskin, Charles Mayton abstract painting, Pat Palermo Greek head painting, Halsey Rodman pedestal, and Martha Rosler crate , 85 x 36 x 36”, courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York