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Rachel Howard

New Paintings

January 6–February 3, 2007
Beverly Hills

Rachel Howard, Fantasy Structure (Red), 2006 Household gloss and acrylic on canvas, 75 × 114 inches (190.5 × 289.6 cm)

Rachel Howard, Fantasy Structure (Red), 2006

Household gloss and acrylic on canvas, 75 × 114 inches (190.5 × 289.6 cm)

Rachel Howard, Visual Memory No Green, 2006 Household gloss and acrylic on canvas, 75 × 114 inches (190.5 × 289.6 cm)

Rachel Howard, Visual Memory No Green, 2006

Household gloss and acrylic on canvas, 75 × 114 inches (190.5 × 289.6 cm)

Rachel Howard, Dorothy, 2006 Household gloss and acrylic on canvas, 114 × 75 inches (121.9 × 91.4 cm)

Rachel Howard, Dorothy, 2006

Household gloss and acrylic on canvas, 114 × 75 inches (121.9 × 91.4 cm)

Rachel Howard, Memory (Orange), 2006 Household gloss on linen, 16 × 16 inches (40.6 × 40.6 cm)

Rachel Howard, Memory (Orange), 2006

Household gloss on linen, 16 × 16 inches (40.6 × 40.6 cm)

About

"...Rachel Howard makes paintings that consist of big blasts of bright, searing color – three or four enamel pours per canvas – whose interactions can leave you uncertain whether they set your teeth on edge or make you want to swoon."
—Barry Schwabsky, Tema Celeste

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Rachel Howard. This is Howard's first exhibition with the gallery.

Rachel Howard uses household high-gloss paint, creating tension between the pedestrian, the utilitarian and the essentially romantic. She employs gravity to influence the paint's direction, with layers of poured paint building up, allowing a combination of the weight of the gloss, precision and chance to determine the landscape of each work. In these new paintings, Howard controls her medium to create grid-like imagery stretched over the canvas. There are no visible brushstrokes, no marks that suggest an intimacy with the movements of the artist, or any sinewy lines to recall the trace of her hand. Her paintings are built architecturally. The terms she uses are those of the builder: construction, reconstruction, building, layering and assembling. The mundane material she utilizes stands in antithesis to the emotional states she wishes to explore. This is spirituality for a postmodern world.

Rachel Howard was born in County Durham, United Kingdom, in 1969. She graduated from Goldsmith's College in 1991 with a degree in Fine Arts. Howard currently lives and works in London. Her works have been shown extensively throughout Europe. She has participated in many group exhibitions, including Intuition/(im)precision at Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria, curated by Thomas Krens in 2004 and presently is showing at the Serpentine Gallery, London In the Darkest Hour There May be Light – Works from Damien Hirst's Murderme collection. She also has an upcoming show at the Bohen Foundation, New York in February 2007.