(Now & Then) A Closer Look: Copy of the Original by Rachel Livedalen
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Our 2020 exhibitions will always hold a special place in IS Projects history as they marked the gallery’s virtual pivot during the pandemic. In an unexpected turn of events, we found ourselves connecting even more with our exhibiting artists as we developed new opportunities to deep-dive into their work through virtual gallery tours, our gallery shop, virtual artist talks, and additional programming. During this time, we also decided to start writing articles on our exhibitions to provide a “closer look” for collectors. We recently decided to unearth these articles from the archive in order to share them on our blog for all to enjoy.
In revisiting these articles, we’ve also taken the opportunity to check back in with our artists, asking them how their work has developed since their show at IS Projects and what upcoming projects they’d like to share. We begin with Rachel Livedalen and her exhibition, Copy of the Original, exhibited July - Sept of 2020.
NOW
Before we revisit Rachel’s exhibition, Copy of the Original, we first want to share what Rachel has been working on from her studio in Texas.
Rachel shares, “Recently in the studio, I've been creating paintings on inkjet printed canvas. First, I create collages on a scanner bed that features a variety of sources and references. These collages are blown up and printed onto canvas and then combined with hand-painted layers. I use a lot of stenciling techniques in my paintings to incorporate graphic elements that reference the printed source materials. The references in the works include cultural ephemera from both fine art and pop-cultural sources like art history textbooks, stickers, makeup palettes, confetti, and album covers.”
If you’d like to hear more about Rachel’s current art practice, she will be giving an artist talk via Zoom for the Mulvane Art Museum on Thursday 3/25 at 6pm Central. Anyone can register and watch at this link: https://washburn.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAucO2pqzkuHdXApx1cLN2-eiRbbJVyXykj
Rachel also has another solo show on the horizon, opening April 10 at Ivester Contemporary in Austin, TX. The show is called it's kinda like that and features the following new works on panel.
Cherry Bomb
acrylic on archival inkjet printed canvas
50" x 38"
2021
Three Things With Commas
acrylic on archival inkjet printed canvas
50" x 38"
2021
Deluxe Beginner
acrylic on archival inkjet printed canvas
50" x 38"
2021
THEN
It is our pleasure to re-present Rachel Livedalen’s solo exhibition, Copy of the Original, a series of works on panel that combine screen printed layers of Greco-Roman textbook pages (Page 56 Parts I - IV) with airbrush and gouache. Structured information depicted in these works relate to the construction and continuation of the art history canon and the way in which we understand visual culture. Textual information appropriated from the same art history text book page surfaces throughout the works and installation. The text is stretched, morphed, or veiled, then layered with different modes of visual information like coded symbols, colorful shapes, or erased gestures. The goal of the work is to question our understanding of visual information both from academic art history and popular culture as it relates to beauty, feminine representation, and artifice. Specifically, these paintings analyze the Knidian Aphrodite, the first sculpture of a female nude in Greek art that now only exists as a Roman copy. This canonical work from western art history thus embodies ideas of representation and reproduction throughout history.
Livedalen’s approach to painting is unmistakably informed by printmaking and often blurs the line between the two disciplines. In the piece, Page 56 Part III, paint is applied to the surface of her panel through careful layering. Livedalen expounds, “Page 56 Part III features a cropped view of the original art history book page, but all the text is masked by layers of black airbrush paint. Superimposed on top are colorful gouache shapes, further obscuring the information presented in the screen printed text layer of the painting.”
Page 56 Part I features a more gestural and loose black airbrushed mark, obscuring screen printed text and further pushing its illegibility. While the text is seemingly inaccessible, Livedalen leaves a thread of clues for the viewer. “In this work, colorful shapes are painted on top of each letter of the text and are coded so that each letter is given a specific color and shape.” This code of colorful shapes is carefully painted through a stencil, mimicking screen printing
The exhibition progresses to two more paintings, Revisions and To Dovetail, which continue to explore the layering and concealment of Livedalen’s symbols and text. Livedalen adds, “[these works] build off of the visual language explored in Page 56 Parts I-IV. […] They both use stenciling techniques to control the boundaries of these layers, exploring restraint of both material and visual reference.”
A large mural of gray text dominates the exhibition space and provides a familiar backdrop for Livedalen’s paintings. “This text excerpt again borrows from [the same text] as the paintings. This page records the beginning of a paragraph titled ‘The Female Nude A New Theme in Greek Art’.” The text is morphed as it waves across two adjoined walls in the gallery space and is adhered to the wall in a pale gray adhesive vinyl.
“The text is meant to transform the exhibition space beyond the neutral white gallery cube. It calls back to the reference explored in the paintings and provides a physical and symbolic background for the artworks.
The image of the Knidian Aphrodite is also represented in wall vinyl, but unceremoniously turned on her side and tucked under the gallery window.”
Copy of the Original was on view through September 2020. If you missed the show in person, you can still take the Virtual Gallery Tour.