Rachel Harrison
For the past thirty years, Harrison has harnessed the tools of abstraction to touch a cultural nerve.
Her sculptures combine handmade, hand-painted forms with items encountered in daily life: from Stanley Cups to zip ties, FedEx boxes to thumb drives. These things are not transformed but allowed to retain their non-art connotations, signalling the limited shelf life of consumer objects and the larger forces they manifest. Harrison's practice also spans drawing, installation, and photography with a recurring interest in mediation, used to cross competing visual regimes and as a spur to formal invention.
Surveys of her work at leading museums—from CCS Bard (Consider the Lobster, 2009) to the Whitney (Life Hack, 2019–20) to the Astrup Fearnley (Sitting in a Room, 2022–23)—have provided occasion to tamper with the exhibition format, as Harrison stages her work in unconventional arrangements that reflect our changing art, pop, and political landscapes.