Upon entering the cavernous gallery space, down a mere five steps from the gritty streets of the Lower East Side, Rachel Foullon's Grab a Root and Growl unceremoniously ushers you into a drastically different world. The title of the show itself references a common rallying cry for 1930's Dust Bowl farmers who refused to abandon their land, which had become barren and inhospitable. In her eight new wall sculptures, Foullon recalls these agrarian lifestyles and cycles of birth and death, as well as the symbiotic relationship between individuals, and between humans, animals, land and the architecture that houses and protects them.
The sewn canvas garments, from a men's nightshirt, a horse's hood, an apron, and a kerchief, are turned into and upon themselves, twisted and loosely knotted. The stiffened heavy canvas pieces are made airy, weightless and beautifully organic in their seductive folds and the painstaking sea-salted muted dyes of pale peach, bleached butter, distressed blues and one very vibrant red. The sea salt, a direct reference to the salts of the earth and of labor, of sweat and blood, are reflected in the laborious construction of each piece. Indeed, upon close inspection, one can see that the pieces of cloth are home-sewn, with halting, imperfect stitches that undoubtedly indicate the care taken with each contact between fabric and thread. The apron, the ultimate signifier of domesticity in the traditional household, is lovingly sewn with scalloped edges and a carefully hidden fabric rose appliqué.
In The Wrong Place, the Wrong Time, in a Sort of Rapture (2009), Foullon subtly transforms a plain red apron into an object of religious and social significance. As with the other pieces, it is anchored to the walls by a crosshatch of colored, hand-milled cedar. The apron, initially a mundane, functional tool, is almost Christ-like in its figuration and is swiftly made heady with meaning when turned upside down, rolled up and its waist ties stretched out across the cedar beams.
The beautifully mottled colors of the pieces play upon each other, pulling the viewer from piece to piece. The sea salt and muted colors of the works bring to mind beach-ridden debris that wash ashore, as they too are remnants of a personal and private history. However, their minimal nature is reminiscent of Richard Tuttle’s tendency for muted colors, basic materials and anti-aesthetic sensibility. Coupling hand-dyed and sewing techniques, it is evident that Foullon is a formalist by nature. Her pieces are a testament to a certain historic period and its people as much as process.
Nevertheless, the mesmerizing folds of the pieces urge the viewer to look closer and examine these people and how they lived. The canvas pieces hang as trophies or – more appropriately, monuments – and are embodiments of the enduring resilience and pride of the individuals, families and animals that remained undeterred by circumstance. The large, exaggerated - almost Oldenburgian - fabric forms are secured with large, oversized nails to hand-finished milled cedar that recall rural architecture from the early Dutch Hallenhaus barn to simple post-and-beam-constructed houses of the Dust Bowl. To offset the soft cloth sculptures, the cedar, colored in pearlescent turquoise, deep browns and stormy grays and blues, mimic wall drawings and the stark, harsh lines of abstraction and static minimalism. However, the work in the center of the gallery stores additional pieces of colored cedar, suggesting that the surrounding pieces can easily contract and expand. Foullon’s works are continuously in flux, much like the persistence of humankind and nature to evolve and, ultimately, to survive.
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
163 Eldridge Street, LES
Through October 25th, 2009
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