Herb Williams + Paul Hazelton
Dec 12 - Jan 16

For the second exhibition to be held at RARE's new space in Chelsea, the gallery will show sculptures by the artists Paul Hazelton and Herb Williams. Both utilize commonplace, readily available materials - Hazelton works primarily with household dust, Williams with crayons - to comment on some of the more intriguing facets of human nature.
Working in a manner that can be characterized as meticulous, immaculate, perhaps even obsessive, the artists magically transform their materials: Hazelton's small and large-scale objects, which seem part memento mori and part archaeological relics from an ancient cabinet of curiosities, not only include dust among their component materials, but also lint, cobwebs, dirt, and insect skeletons. Williams has fashioned thousands upon thousands of crayons into a room-size installation that mingles aspects of mythology and fairytale resulting in a contemplative sculptural setting.
Dust is Hazelton's ally - he grew up in a home where extreme cleanliness was the norm, so much so that when he set up his own home he refused to dust it. Dust became the material that spurred his creativity. The irony is that the immaculate-ness and obsessive-ness he became accustomed to as a child manifested itself in the process of making art. While his objects exhibit a slightly whimsical, how-did-he-make-that quality, they are a conduit for addressing weightier issues of perceived value, religion, the environment, domesticity, and mortality. One of the centerpieces of Hazelton's exhibition is Being and Nothingness (2007-09), which is a skeleton that consists of dust, lint, and insect skeletons, the stuff a human body pretty much becomes once it is six feet under for a time. Yet the very materials that signify death are used here to create something ethereal, beautiful, and transcendent - like life itself.
Williams' room-size installation, entitled Plunderland (2009), consists of nearly 500,000 Crayola crayons that have been re-contextualized from nostalgic implements of childhood into a contemporary bestiary that addresses human concerns and fears. Crayon clouds from above and below provide the enclosure in which a giant, twisting, technicolor vine becomes a lifeline for three rabbits that have climbed out of their hole. They find themselves on uncertain ground between the cloud layers as they begin their odyssey, the result of which cannot be known. The Golden Fleece, draped over the vine, seems within their grasp, but a Cheshire-like beast reclines nearby perhaps ready to pounce or maybe sufficiently sated from its last kill, judging from its bloodied muzzle, to let the rabbits pass. Mingling shades of "Jack and the Beanstalk," Jason's Quest for the Golden Fleece, and Alice in Wonderland,Plunderland is a metaphor for the often treacherous search for human fulfillment.
Hazelton, who makes his home in the seaside town of Margate on the Kent coast of England, has exhibited extensively throughout the UK. His show at RARE has been made possible in part by a grant from the British Council. Williams' work can be found in numerous public and private collections; it has been extensively profiled in the media, particularly in connection with his portrait of President Obama (Unite, 2008) consisting of 50,000 crayons.

Suzanne Unrein
Jan 23 - Feb 20

RARE Gallery is pleased to present a series of new large-format paintings by Suzanne Unrein, a New York-based artist who uses the inspiration provided by Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo masterpieces as a starting point for addressing contemporary issues in painting - the possibilities of abstraction and the ability within that sphere to create a compelling visual impact through the exploration of composition, movement, and color. While finding her motivation in the imagery of Old Masters such as Rubens, Poussin, Tiepolo, and Raphael, Unrein approaches her craft not as a narrator or story teller, but as an artist interested in abstracting the formal language of the distant past to expand the language of contemporary painting.

As an avid dog owner, Unrein began to notice over the last several years the abundance of dogs in Old Master paintings. She found them present not only in typical hunting scenes, but also in religious paintings such as Rubens' Flagellation of Christ (1607) and Tiepolo's The Finding of Moses (ca. early 1730s). While the presence of these dogs intimates faithfulness, in a number of 16th through 18th century paintings the animals seem strangely out of place to the contemporary eye, such as in the Rubens' painting where the dog in the lower right-hand corner appears to be smiling while Jesus is being whipped. Intrigued by the "stand alone" or independent qualities a number of these dogs embody and the interesting anatomical possibilities they presented, Unrein began to extract them from various Old Master paintings and abstract them and make them a focal point of her own work.

While researching Rubens' work, Unrein discovered that many of the dogs in his paintings 
were executed by Frans Snyders, a Flemish Baroque painter who became famous in his own right for spirited hunting scenes depicting hounds giving chase or doing battle with wild animals (e.g., Wild Boar Hunt, 1625-30). In Snyders' hands, hounds became highly distorted, stretched to the limit, and nearly abstracted as forms hurtling through space, providing further inspiration to Unrein in her exploration of form, composition, and color. She came to think of the hounds as a dysfunctional Greek chorus - commenting on the actions of human figures without any apparent connection to them or the offering up of much in the way of explanation.

In addition to working in an abstract mode, Unrein further erases the origins of her forms by mixing together figures by different artists and from paintings of different eras. This approach places her work squarely in the realm of contemporary painting by imparting to it an open-ended sensibility that allows viewers multiple points of entry and a freedom to interpret unhampered by preconceptions.

Unrein was born in Sacramento, CA, and currently lives and works in New York City. She was the recipient of a Fellowship from the Jentel Artist Residency Program (2009) and a Project Studio Recipient at PS 122 (2007-09). She received her Bachelor's Degree from the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Christine Gray
Feb 27 - Mar 27

RARE Gallery is pleased to present a series of new paintings and works on paper by Christine Gray, a Richmond, Virginia-based artist, in "Closer and Closer," her solo debut in New York. Her works focus on the very human impulse to purse revelatory experiences via Nature. In order to conjure these extraordinary moments of communion, Gray crafts make-shift talismanic objects of almost prehistoric intensity and simplicity and then paints them into settings of gorgeous luminosity and otherworldliness. The objects and their settings concentrate humankind's desires and yearnings, transforming them into something transcendent.

In Late Lights (2010) and Closer and Closer (2009), for example, a broken gourd-shaped vessel, a horseshoe magnet, and various feathered, fabric and twig appendages are floated in backyard settings suffused with the ethereal light of peculiarly illuminated nighttime skies. Gray employs the suburban backyard as an entry point to Nature because its illusion of privacy and ownership allows anxieties to subside to permit experience-seekers to move closer to Nature.

Glow-Lure Tears for Moth Mass (2009) seems to take things a step further by turning a backyard setting into a cave-like environment emitting a sulfurous glow and studded with crystalline and stalagmite-like structures topped off by a suspended mass of interlocked moths. Viewed through a flimsy wood bower, a pitch black sky can barely contain a mirage of cascading stars.

The title of the exhibition, "Closer and Closer," underlines the persistence of Man's search for personal, meaningful interludes with the natural world. However, the very nature of this determination is weighed down with the intent to control or harness occurrences rather than allow them to come about naturally.

The artificiality of Man's approach is hinted at by the artist's purposeful bursting of the illusion her paintings seek to create - she allows us to see the various ropes, gadgets, and other contraptions that hold together the three-dimensional settings she cobbles together in her studio and on which her paintings are based. It is Gray's way of indicating that attaining higher planes of spiritual existence cannot be forced or manufactured. Yet in spite of our laborious and perhaps even delusional (how can one expect to experience the full force of Nature sitting in a backyard?) efforts in this regard, our intent and purpose appear to be full of joyous and sincere celebration.

Gray has had one-person exhibitions at Okay Mountain in Austin, Texas; Project 4 in Washington, D.C.; and Cress Gallery of Art at the University of Tennessee. She recently completed residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, and at 7 Below in Burlington, Vermont. She also has received generous support from the Golden Foundation and Virginia Commonwealth University. Gray won the 2010 Miami University Young Painters Competition for the William and Dorothy Yeck Award.

Nic Rad
Apr 3 - May 8

Rad created PeopleMatter in response to the shifting structure of the media industry. The subjects were selected from RSS Feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and FourSquare to get a sense of their social habits and the spheres they occupy. Rad's depictions range from faithfulness to distortion and abstraction based on each person's media presence and perceived personality traits.

PeopleMatter is a reflection of a toppled but vibrant cultural conversation. "Free" is a featured characteristic of this moment.

In the spirit of the exhibition, RARE will encourage those purchasers of other work by Rad to participate in the ongoing gift actions of the PeopleMatter community.

Johnston Foster
May 15 - June 19

Johnston Foster, a Richmond, VA-based artist, will present his fourth solo show, titled Catch & Release, at RARE from May 15 through June 19. He will exhibit a group of new sculptures created from salvaged materials gathered from highway medians, back roads, alleys, and dumpsters. Works include an 11-foot long, 12-legged tiger balancing a hornets' nest in its tail, a gutted shark giving birth to its offspring, a hornet-infested pizza, and a unicorn sinking in a tar pit.

The artist continues his exploration of fundamental sculptural ideas of shape and form by utilizing and breathing new life into things that consumers consign to the dust bin. Imparting a bold, readily recognizable rough-hewn aesthetic to materials and exhibiting an exuberant, almost child-like engagement with process, he infuses his objects with a combination of wide-eyed innocence and an open-ended sensibility that is simultaneously inviting and foreboding.

Foster is a hunter & gatherer who forages for his materials before even he knows what they will become. His art-making process finds its inspiration in the simple need to create things with his hands . . . nothing more . . . nothing less. While his guess as to what the end result will be is as good as anyone's, perhaps through a combination of subconscious compulsion and the utilization of materials that serve as a cultural X-ray, Foster is always saying something, or at least allowing viewers to "say" (or see) something through his work.

In the past, the artist's sculpture seemed to hold up a mirror to our less attractive cultural traits of materialism, greed, and wastefulness. In anticipation of the recent birth of his son, he has produced work of a different quality, inspired more than usual by the sheer life-affirming act of creating. Tucked into the new sculpture are glimpses of the joys and fears, and outright wackiness, associated with the responsibility for creating something out of the love of doing so.

The centerpiece of the exhibition, an 11-foot long tiger titled The Keeper (2010), which sports a multitude of eyes, legs, and paws, impresses as an act of creation gone amuck. However, one will not be hard pressed to find a measure of humanity in this beast. Weighted down by its own limbs while gently cradling a hornets' nest in its tail and transporting a swarm of hornets on its hindquarters, the tiger appears to be engaged in a symbiotic relationship.

In the more violent Catch & Release (2009), Foster still maintains a life-affirming stance - although viciously cut open and left to die, a mother shark has been forced to birth several babies that will continue on in her absence. Foster scatters a few other slices of life throughout his show: a whirling dervish of a pizza pie (Supreme, 2010) is being lifted off the ground by scores of hornets who find sustenance in its crust and toppings, while 25 severed tiger paws (Souvenir, 2010) are given lives of their own by the inclusion of an all-seeing eye in each one of them.

In 2004, Foster exhibited in one of the project rooms at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. A group exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco followed in 2005, along with a solo show at Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Utah. In the winter of 2007, Foster's second museum solo show took place at University Galleries, Illinois State University (catalog). He exhibited in December 2007 at Lieu d'Images et d'Art (LIA) in Grenoble, France, and was part of a group exhibition in October 2008 at CRAC Alsace in Altkirch, France. His third solo show at RARE in September 2008 preceded a one-person exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (catalog). He made his European solo debut in 2009 at galerieXprssns in Hamburg and will be included in two group shows in 2010: at Kidspace at MASS MoCA (Fall 2010) and at the Torrance Art Museum in California (Summer 2010).

Psychedelic Summer
Lo-Fi Record Shop & Art Show
Curated by CMRTYZ
June 24 - July 24

RARE Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition and independent record shop curated by Seattle-based collaborative studio CMRTYZ. Including original artwork by John Malta, C.M. Ruiz, Cassie Ramone, and Matthew Volz, Psychedelic Summer promises to be this season's weirdest happening. Stocked with vinyl, limited editions, and assorted lo-fi merch by Bachelor, Captured Tracks, CMRTYZ, Family Time, Floridas Dying, Goner, HoZac, Psychic Lunch, Vice, and others, the shop will occupy RARE from June 24 to July 24. The Beets and The Babiesperform on opening night, Thursday, June 24.

Psychedelic Summer brings together artists from around the country who share a commitment to the resurgent lo-fi music scene. Characterized by a strong DIY punk ethos, all of the work in this show maintains the grittiness and dreamy quality of the lo-fi music that inspires it.

John Malta presents an installation entitled Moldy Oldies, a wildly colorful, yet dingy basement scene of monsters, video-game consoles, and artifacts of teenage angst constructed from found materials.

Cassie Ramone's tabletop shrine to Pop Americana is an eerie tribute to life on the road, informed by years of touring around the country with her band Vivian Girls. Also included in the show are a selection of Ramone's hand-drawn copies of the The Village Voice classified ads.

As the official artist for The Beets, Matthew Volz creates a new tapestry as a backdrop for each of the band's shows. Volz will debut two brand new works on fabric at Psychedelic Summer, and 50 of his customized t-shirts will be available in the record shop.

C.M. Ruiz works with Xerox and pen, creating bold, abrasive, black & white collages in the tradition of the first punk zines and flyers. In addition to producing original framed pieces for the exhibition, Ruiz constructed and designed the Psychedelic Summer record store installation with collaborator, co-curator, and CMRTYZ head honcho Ty Ziskis.

The artists participating in Psychedelic Summer will be featured in a limited edition newsprint zine designed by Ruiz. Copies will be available at RARE, MoMA PS1 bookstore, TATE, London bookstore, and at Oak in Williamsburg and Manhattan.