Pre - Occupation: New work by Rebecca Chamberlain

On the surface, the domains envisioned in Rebecca Chamberlain’s highly composed multipanel works appear pristine, almost sterile. In their pre- occupied condition, there is a calm though somewhat disquieting atmosphere. With imagery of architecture from between the World Wars, Chamberlain drains from the scenes all human commotion, seeming to hold at bay the trauma of the recent past and the anxiety of the destabilizing future.

If spaces are, as the artist suggests, sites of potential connection, Chamberlain’s interior-scapes are pregnant with secular and sacred possibility. The rooms are buzzing with energetic opportunities that make many viewers self conscious…as if they have stumbled into an off limits drawing room with mud on their shoes. These highly choreographed scenes are hyper-realistic.

One key work in the exhibition is a large diptych featuring two staircases: one ascending and the other descending, each into blinding glare. The images are sourced from photographs from a town in Eritrea called Asmara, which was largely constructed during the mid-late 1930s under Italian occupation. The resulting Italian modernist aesthetic in the midst of an African landscape is surrealist. The staircases depicted are central accesses to different floors in different apartment buildings. The scale of the piece is sized after Rogier van der Weyden's Crucifixion Diptych. Chamberlain believes that some architecture can provide space for contemplation and access to the divine, secular cathedrals for modern life.

Another significant piece titled “Reception” shows entries from domestic and office spaces on both sides of the Atlantic. The precise geometry and fractile unfolding of this work highlights the inherent precision of the subject and the artist’s conceptually appropriate, process-oriented construction of the works.

The source imagery for all of the works in the exhibition are vintage photographs and documents. These images transmit photographically the aesthetic DNA of the time. Chamberlain transposes these overly lit and blown out shots into saturated, mostly mono-chromatic vistas. Now using lithography inks (in lieu of ballpoint pen inks which had too limited a palette), Chamberlain pushes the oily and iridescent pigment across the vintage architectural tracing paper. The result is as light-filled as the actual spaces, yet is clearly mediated by Chamberlain’s artistic process.

The presentation will include 5 new multi-panel arrangements, two sculptural desk set plinths and several more intimate works.

Rebecca Chamberlain, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, is known for her diverse accomplishments in fine art, fashion and performance. This body of work is ongoing and has been included in group exhibitions at 303 Gallery and Knoedler Project Space in New York, Champion Fine Art in LA and Agenzio04 in Bologna, Italy, among others. This will be Chamberlain’s first solo exhibit of this work. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Flash Art and Tema Celeste among other publications.

In addition to her visual projects, Chamberlain has performed with Research (Electra Records) and for the installation art/ performance/ musical trio, Infant Reader (Beggar’s Banquet Sulfur Records label). She is currently working with Maxi Geil! & PlayColt, an art world based rock and performance group. They have held events at MoMA, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Bloomberg Space in London as well regular gigs in local New York venues. The band was featured in the Performance Art Biennial, PERFORMA05 and they released their first full-length album in 2007 under the British label, FRED Music.