Rubell Family Collection

NO MAN'S LAND
By: Women artists from the Rubell Family Collection
Presented by: Rubell Family Collection


The Rubell Collection is currently showing work by female artists. From my experience, the outlying theme is texture. Almost every piece I encountered depicted some sort of texture. It is fascinating to see all the different ways one can create the illusion of texture by applying layered paint, using line play, and simply arranging textured fabric. Following, are some examples of how some artists used different methods to show texture.

Below is Janine Antoni's work. She filled a bathtub with lard and carved into it leaving a textured mark on the surface of the material.

                                                      

This next painting is by a Ida Ekblad. She painted this series of squiggly lines that all entangle to create the illusion of space. She used oil and what she did was she layered bicycle inner tubes on top of one another and painted over them to create the texture that is visible.

                                                      

Here we see a diptych. This is just flat paint, however, it appears as if the lines are bulging out of the canvas. This is genius because it is playing with one's perception. A slight curvature in the straight lines, when organized in the present order will give this lovely illusion.

   
                               

This next piece is a mixture of sculpture and painting. It's hanging on the wall but it is protruding. The artist arranged thin fabric strings hanging one end from one side of the piece to the next allowing the string to have slack creating a slight curvature. She then painted a diagonal line that further uniformed the fabric. This is a simple idea and though well executed, I would have used a different support system as I find the wood beams in the back distracting.

                                           

This next piece uses canvas itself to indicate texture. Cut canvas that is, into small strips and then weaved together creating square-like patterns that seem to dissolve at the center making them 3 dimensional and creating a textured surface.

             

Though the exhibition is titled 'No Man's Land, this certainly looks like a man would live here. It's a whole room covered in beer cans. Maybe I'm being a little stereotypical by associating the beer cans with men, but that's just the way I see it. Normally, when we think of a wall, we think flat surface. These walls however, adorned with beer cans create a texture when they are arranged in the orderly fashion they are presented.

             

This last piece, reminds me of my own hair. Why, because it itself is made of hair. It is beautiful and disgusting at the same time. Long stretches of combined hair extend from the ceiling down to the floor and curl around to their endless tip. This artist, collected hair for over a decade and as she did so, she put it together and as I perceived it, ran over it with a steam roller. Long, flat dreadlocks. As a person who has dreadlocks, I know how it feels, the texture is a little rough but soothing at the same time. This was my favorite piece in the whole collection.