CHICAGO — The matter-of-actuality title of Melissa Brown’s solo presentation at Andrew Rafacz in Chicago, Thrift Retail outlet Discover, belies the complexity she attracts from the individual power of the secondhand in United States society: Made use of objects have with them their have inscrutable histories. At the exact same time, they provide as blank slates, reflecting human wishes and associations and having on contemporary meanings in every single new setting. Across 8 new paintings and an “exhibition within just the exhibition,” all of which element observed and thrifted objects, the New York-dependent artist generates a world that is animated, possibly even enchanted, by the multivalence of these things.
Brown’s however everyday living paintings are in actuality dynamic tableaux whose subjects are imbued with an often uncanny feeling of vitality. Search intently and you will see that the tissue in “Waiting Room” (all paintings 2022) is as transparent as the ribbon of vapor wafting out of the diffuser up coming to it. The jumpy keyboard in “Player’s Table” would seem poised to eliminate some of its keys to Lake Michigan, outside the house the window. A breeze gently stirs a shimmering mobile in “Windspinner,” and light-weight appears to collapse into a vortex at the heart of the trippy “Stopped Time at Lake Shrine.” Eggs, houseplants, h2o, many vessels — these all propose lifestyle and progress. Still references to mortality — a burning candle, a clock, a figurine of Anubis, the Egyptian god of demise — also inhabit the compositions. To read through any of these merely as symbolic, while, would flatten the prosperous interaction between the objects’ legibility and illegibility, their previous life and potential futures.
Two added paintings are layered trompe-l’oeil renderings of located artworks. In “Recollections,” a tag painted in close proximity to the bottom notes that the piece is a “Vintage Needle Position Collage,” while “Smoking Sailor” options an archetypal naval figure, bearded and wearing a rumpled hat and raincoat, gazing into the length. These will work, in individual, showcase how the textures of Brown’s different procedures, like stencil, airbrush, display screen-printed digital images, and impasto, develop the two spatial and conceptual depth. Segments of the image appear to be to appear in and out of target, virtually as if several registers of time are obvious simultaneously.
Introduced alongside Brown’s canvases is a two-wall installation of real thrift store finds, which run the gamut from a decoy duck to a Darth Vader belt buckle, from a grey wig to a black plastic journal file, alongside with an array of vintage glassware and kitschy ceramics. These items were being contributed by 29 Chicago-space artists as part of a poker match structured by Brown just ahead of the exhibition’s opening. Every invited player acquired into the match with one of the objects, so the screen in this article signifies the all round pot, received by one particular of the artists, as well as a nexus of this neighborhood community. The collaborative gesture introduces another dimension to the exhibition: that of circulation and exchange, of the embodied and interconnected human interactions that facilitate the flows of objects, and their essential position in (re)building the new.
Melissa Brown: Thrift Keep Find carries on at Andrew Rafacz Gallery (1749 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois) through July 16. The exhibition was arranged by the gallery.
