WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
RACHEL HARRISON | LIFE HACK
EXHIBITION COVERAGE
Rachel Harrison, Huffy Howler, 2004. Wood, polystyrene, cement, acrylic, Huffy Howler bicycle, handbags, rocks, stones, gravel, brick, one sheepskin, two fox tails, metal pole, wire, pigmented inkjet print, and binder clips, 213.4 x 213.4 x 76.2 cm. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2008; courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. Photograph by Jean Vong
RACHEL HARRISON LIFE HACK
Oct 25, 2019–Jan 12, 2020
Rachel Harrison, Alexander the Great, 2007. Wood, chicken wire, polystyrene, cement, acrylic, mannequin, Jeff Gordon waste basket, plastic Abraham Lincoln mask, sunglasses, fabric, necklace, and two unidentified items, 221 x 231.1 x 101.6 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds, 2007; courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. Photograph by Jean Vong
Rachel Harrison was born in 1966 in New York. She received a BA in fine art from Wesleyan University in 1989. During the 1990s, she developed an eclectic sculptural language in which abstract forms are juxtaposed with seemingly ignoble materials (jars of honey, aluminum cans) and peppered with pop-cultural references.
The resulting works, which mix the seemingly incommensurate languages of Minimalism and Pop, are powerful both as three-dimensional structures and as assemblages of two-dimensional imagery.
Rachel Harrison’s first full-scale survey will track the development of her career over the past twenty-five years, incorporating room-size installations, autonomous sculpture, photography, and drawing. Harrison’s complex works—in which readymades collude with invented forms—bring together the breadth of art history, the impurities of politics, and the artifacts of pop and celebrity culture. The exhibition will include approximately one hundred works spanning the early 1990s to the present, drawn from private and public collections throughout the world.
This exhibition is organized by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, and David Joselit, Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York, with Kelly Long, curatorial assistant.
Rachel Harrison, Hoarders, 2012. Wood; polystyrene; chicken wire; cement; cardboard; acrylic; metal pail; flat screen monitor; wireless headphones; runway carpet; and Hoarders Video, digital video, color, sound, 10:39 min (2012). Overall dimensions variable. Sculpture: 154.9 x 119.4 x 114.3 cm. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. Photograph: John Berens
Harrison’s first solo show, at Arena Gallery in New York in 1996, was titled Should home windows or shutters be required to withstand a direct hit from an eight-foot-long two-by-four shot from a cannon at 34 miles an hour, without creating a hole big enough to let through a three-inch sphere? In it, the artist created an installation that resembled an absurdly decorated interior, replete with such heterogeneous materials as photographs of trash bags, globs of brightly colored papier-mâché, and cans of peas. In other works—such as Unplugged, produced for the 2000 Whitney Biennial—Harrison utilizes sculpture as a display device to support photographs.
She has frequently made reference to systems of belief—both religion and consumer culture—in her selection of images; for Perth Amboy (2001), for example, she took photographs of a New Jersey home where an image of the Virgin Mary had been spotted in condensation on a window. Her Posh Floored as Ali G Tackles Becks (2004), an installation at the Camden Arts Centre in London, consisted of videos and dynamic sculptures of found objects painted and set in plaster; here the composite readymade was converted into an abstract reference to a tabloid news story. Her more recent photographic series Voyage of the Beagle (2007), named after Charles Darwin’s field journal, explores a wide gamut of figural representation ranging from mannequins to public sculptures, from taxidermy animals to 5000-year-old Corsican sculptures. Sculptures like Blazing Saddles (2003) and All in the Family (2012) enact a range of dialogues—between handcrafted and commercially produced objects, aesthetic and consumer goods, among other topics—and engage broader social and political histories of exchange.
Harrison has had solo exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum (2002); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2003); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2004); Migros Museum, Zurich (2007); Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2009); Portikus, Frankfurt (2009); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010); and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (2013). She has also participated in numerous group shows, including Poverty Pop: The Aesthetics of Necessity at Exit Art, New York (1993); Installations/Projects at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1), New York (1998); Walker Evans & Company at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000); Carnegie International (2004); Unmonumental at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2007); Whitney Biennial (2008); Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2010); and America is Hard to See at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015). She lives and works in New York.
-Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York;
Rachel Harrison, All in the Family, 2012. Wood, polystyrene, chicken wire, cement, acrylic, and Hoover vacuum cleaner, 236.2 x 86.4 x 86.4 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; purchased with funds contributed by the International Director’s Council, 2012; courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. Photograph by John Berens
Major support for Rachel Harrison Life Hack is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Whitney’s National Committee.
Generous support is provided by Candy and Michael Barasch and The Morris A. Hazan Family Foundation, Sueyun and Gene Locks, and Susan and Larry Marx.
Significant support is provided by Constance R. Caplan, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Krystyna Doerfler, The Keith Haring Foundation Exhibition Fund, Ashley Leeds and Christopher Harland, Han Lo, Diane and Adam E. Max, and Chara Schreyer.
Additional support is provided by Eleanor Cayre, Suzanne and Bob Cochran, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Rebecca and Martin Eisenberg, and Emily Rauh Pulitzer.
Generous exhibition production support is provided by Greene Naftali, New York, with additional support from Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014
