A easy change of perspective can crack open a universe of prospects — and in Rachel Martin’s galaxy, the art work greets you the other way up.
Her physique arched in a backbend, a feminine determine donning a Tlingít masks perches on red-nailed fingers in a unprecedented balancing act, playfully beckoning guests into the artist’s first solo present in New York Metropolis.
True to its identify, Bending the Guidelines gathers 15 works on paper that defy conference in additional methods than one. I felt a magnetic pull towards the Queens-based Tlingít artist’s imaginative field of regard, drawing from Indigenous Northwest Coast formline practices to conjure her personal inventive vocabulary. Martin grew up between California and Montana’s Fort Peck Indian Reservation and related with Tlingít tradition later in life, most just lately by means of studying to talk the language. Right here, her capability to weave cultural traditions collectively and imbue them along with her distinctive voice has translated into creative drawings that heart the enjoyment of communing, confiding, and sharing meals.
“If our desk might speak” (2024), the anchoring centerpiece of the present, is a pure gathering place for different guests set with eight delectably drawn plates organized for a shared meal of Indigenous dishes. Nourishment is the artist’s conceptual guiding star, rendered in her elegant traces as a plate of salmon and peas shared with somebody you like. I’ve usually felt alienated by sparse exhibits at this and different glitzy Manhattan galleries, however Martin’s exhibition breathes contemporary air into the house.
A spirit of play and precision characterizes a number of smaller and mid-sized works throughout the present, all stuffed with scrumptious element that compels viewers to return shut and revel within the little issues. In “Sizzling Lady Summer season” (2024), minute formline u-shapes, crescents, and ovoids compose a determine in repose — maybe having fun with her final hoorah earlier than demure fall. Martin’s graphite and coloured pencil linework is equal elements humorous, tender, and liberated. Paper tooth generously exhibits by means of. Graphic sensibility abounds. It’s any drawing devotee’s wildest dream.
One other determine in a backbend sports activities an eyebrow within the form of a fowl in “Wolf Brows 4 Life” (2024); as a fellow thick-eyebrows girly, I felt seen. And who wouldn’t smile at “Yéil’s Sock Cash” (2023), during which a personality in a raven masks mischievously squirrels a $20 invoice into the security of their crew sock?
These witty items orbit beautiful monumental works, with “Love is a tide is a style is a seed is a tree,” a singing composition stretching over 5 ft tall, working as a gradual beat to enrich Martin’s wry standpoint. Its two masked topics kneel and attain out to 1 one other, regardless of the distinct channels working by means of their geometric our bodies: certainly one of fish, the opposite of summary patterns and shapes.
Martin’s easy mix of humor and tenderness is maybe finest exemplified by a hanging drawing of a masked determine carrying a pair of Converse and a sweeping scarf adorned with formline motifs, titled “She’s a ten however she boils herring eggs till they’re all white and rubbery” (2024). However the artist serves a extra filling meal on this exhibition; and, evidently, she ate.
Rachel Martin: Bending The Guidelines continues at Hannah Traore Gallery (150 Orchard Avenue, Decrease East Facet, Manhattan) by means of November 9. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.