RWFA is pleased to present:

Rachael WREN: The Long Way Home

I think of the grid as a scaffolding to hang the space on. It keeps the air in the painting anchored so that it doesn’t float away. The stronger the structure, the more freedom the color and atmosphere have to play within it…I like the idea of bringing together these small pieces with crisp and defined edges, to create a sense of misty or blurry atmosphere. Through accumulation, the solid marks are transformed into an ephemeral space. Within the repetition, though, there is also randomness. While the size and shape of the marks is consistent, their position is haphazard and intuitive – they are not located in the same place in each square of the grid. There are no repeating patterns to be found. This interplay between the systematic and the irregular echoes a similar balance in the natural world. Not only do order and randomness work side by side in nature, but their very coexistence is the catalyst for growth and newness.

Rachael Wren, Art Spiel, April, 2019, interview with Etty Yaniv.

The curious and unsettling sense of revelation such a radial spatial model contains underscores the extent of our acceptance of and dependence on the rectangular Cartesian grid. The grid is a powerfully ambiguous system, at once authoritarian (it can be imposed onto a piece of the earth’s surface the designer has never even seen) and democratic (the pieces, within some bounds, are interchangeable and negotiable). It is orderly, very easy to describe, and altogether unmemorable (“was that 92nd Street or 93rd?”)…

Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moore, from Body, Memory and Architecture, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977.

Rick Wester Fine Art presents Rachael Wren’s second solo exhibition at our 26th Street gallery with new works from 2023 and 2024. Continuing her exploration of variant color layering and random mark making over a structured grid, Wren animates her paintings with a dynamic vibrancy by employing underlying more prominent diagonal motif. Taking off from her first exhibition, Still it Grows (February 10 - April 2, 2022), the current works create vertiginous plays of abstracted geometric forms that still suggest landscape views and harken back to Wren’s en plein air roots. The tension between observation and abstraction, representation and suggestion is the energy fueling their improvisational impact. Wren does not apply formulas or rely upon mathematical calculations to compose her works. They begin with an idea as to the form and then organically develop to their completion. Reflecting the title of the exhibition, the paintings themselves are cartographic explorations of concepts of space, searching for the memory of place, of home.

Over the course of the exhibition RWFA will be inviting guest writers to lend their perspectives on Wren's works and process. If you don't already follow us on Instagram, please do: @rwfa_nyc