Jessica Rankin
13 Feb - 19 Mar 2016
JESSICA RANKIN
Field of Mars
13 February - 19 March 2016
carlier | gebauer is pleased to present a solo exhibition with the Australian artist Jessica Rankin. Field of Mars will be the artist‘s third exhibition with the gallery.
Jessica Rankin is best known for her expansive celestial maps and landscapes, which are interspersed with codes, signs, and symbols that refer to the processes of memory, intuition, and interpretation. Rankin often begins her creative process with the written word, combining stream of consciousness, found texts, stories, memories and fleeting thoughts. She then cuts apart individual words and phrases and recomposes them into new sequences using a method of ”guided chance.“ These clusters of texts are then integrated into Rankin‘s drawings and embroideries.
In her current exhibition with carlier | gebauer, Rankin continues to employ constellation maps as a frame of reference. The works on view all refer to a single night sky - a date of personal significance for the artist. By focusing on a discreet, private moment, Rankin places the personal within a broader macro-relationship to time and space. Rankin‘s large-scale embroidery Field of Mars depicts a delicate celestial lattice plotting the points between the stars on the date that she found and visited her mother‘s grave. Although the term Field of Mars extends back to antiquity, Rankin‘s use of the name refers to the cemetery where her mother was buried. Typically ascribed to the women‘s realm, the medium of embroidery proposes an immersive slowness of process that reinscribes an association that once belonged to military antiquity into a highly subjective poetic reference.
Similarly, landscapes become personal and not simply geographical in Rankin‘s works. Her collage Could I Just Have The Sober Hand depicts the rolling hills, meadows, and rugged coastline of England. Using photographs culled from the book A Writer‘s Britain, Rankin‘s collage seems to emphasize the seams between each image, highlighting a discontinuity in the depicted landscape that formally evokes lapses in memory and the gap between things as they are experienced and as they are remembered.
Jessica Rankin (b.1971, Sydney) lives and works in New York. In spring 2016 Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens will present the two person exhibition Julie Mehretu/ Jessica Rankin. Selected solo exhibitions include Salon 94, New York (2014); SCAD, Atlanta (2013); PS1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York (2006); and Franklin Artworks, Minneapolis (2005). Rankin has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the US, Europe and Australia.
Field of Mars
13 February - 19 March 2016
carlier | gebauer is pleased to present a solo exhibition with the Australian artist Jessica Rankin. Field of Mars will be the artist‘s third exhibition with the gallery.
Jessica Rankin is best known for her expansive celestial maps and landscapes, which are interspersed with codes, signs, and symbols that refer to the processes of memory, intuition, and interpretation. Rankin often begins her creative process with the written word, combining stream of consciousness, found texts, stories, memories and fleeting thoughts. She then cuts apart individual words and phrases and recomposes them into new sequences using a method of ”guided chance.“ These clusters of texts are then integrated into Rankin‘s drawings and embroideries.
In her current exhibition with carlier | gebauer, Rankin continues to employ constellation maps as a frame of reference. The works on view all refer to a single night sky - a date of personal significance for the artist. By focusing on a discreet, private moment, Rankin places the personal within a broader macro-relationship to time and space. Rankin‘s large-scale embroidery Field of Mars depicts a delicate celestial lattice plotting the points between the stars on the date that she found and visited her mother‘s grave. Although the term Field of Mars extends back to antiquity, Rankin‘s use of the name refers to the cemetery where her mother was buried. Typically ascribed to the women‘s realm, the medium of embroidery proposes an immersive slowness of process that reinscribes an association that once belonged to military antiquity into a highly subjective poetic reference.
Similarly, landscapes become personal and not simply geographical in Rankin‘s works. Her collage Could I Just Have The Sober Hand depicts the rolling hills, meadows, and rugged coastline of England. Using photographs culled from the book A Writer‘s Britain, Rankin‘s collage seems to emphasize the seams between each image, highlighting a discontinuity in the depicted landscape that formally evokes lapses in memory and the gap between things as they are experienced and as they are remembered.
Jessica Rankin (b.1971, Sydney) lives and works in New York. In spring 2016 Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens will present the two person exhibition Julie Mehretu/ Jessica Rankin. Selected solo exhibitions include Salon 94, New York (2014); SCAD, Atlanta (2013); PS1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York (2006); and Franklin Artworks, Minneapolis (2005). Rankin has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the US, Europe and Australia.