An exhibition of works by Rachel Kaye. August 28 to October 4, 2008.
With a revised sense of portraiture, the selection of paintings for the exhibition, Under the Affluence, culminates into a provocative cabinet of the figure and its domestic interior. Rachel Kaye’s process distills celebrity magazine clippings and photographs of high-profile women into careful recompositions reflecting the efficacy of portraits as affirmations of authority, beauty and power. These iconic depictions of desirable women, shimmering chandeliers and decadent living quarters position the viewer within a voyeuristic gaze in continuous anticipation of the figure. The elite playpens and staged realities are rendered temporal and ironic highlighting the interior as a constant projection of self-fashioning, wealth and opulence.
Rachel Kaye received her Bachelors degree in Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts (CCA) in 2004, where her studies were primarily concentrated in abstraction. Ultimately finding nonrepresentational painting lifeless and impersonal, Kaye made a momentous departure from abstraction and turned to the figure. Her previous focus in pure color and composition coupled with her current interest in the language of social status form the basis for this exceptional body of work.
Shown for the first time in the Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, Kaye’s work purposefully strikes a balance between severity and lightness addressing the absurdity of celebrity obsession while calling attention to systems of value. Adobe Books is delighted to host Rachel Kaye’s solo exhibition and honored to include her in the gallery’s longstanding history of showcasing local emerging artists. — Devon Bella, Curator
