Rental Gallery is pleased to present two new exhibitions opening September 2, 2017: Geoff McFetridge: Test for Positive Thinking and Elsa Hansen Oldham: New Work. A public reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, September 2 from 6-8pm. The works will remain on view through Tuesday, October 31.
In the upstairs gallery, Oldham’s small-scale embroidered works draw viewers into a history of traditional and decorative arts before jarring them with them with their cannily subversive subject matter, from fetishism to hip hop to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hansen draws unexpected parallels between generations of artists, musicians, cultural icons, gently balancing satire and social commentary.
The downstairs gallery will feature new compositions by McFetridge, whose images function cyclically, dynamically shifting while remaining tensely structured. It is as if they are möbius strips, or overlaid animation cells. The unique graphic sensibilities of these works result from the artist’s multifaceted creative practice. In addition to his painting, McFetridge helms the uniquely autonomous design studio Champion Graphics, in which he has created groundbreaking work for Google, Apple, the New Yorker, Patagonia, Nike, and the New York Times, as well as Hollywood films such as Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and Spike Jonze’s Her. With a mellow palette and taut line work, McFetridge’s work speaks both to the aesthetics of laid back vibes and the reproducibility of pop, be it anchored in Warhol or Thomas Bayrle. These new paintings straddle the line between pattern and figuration, showing people, animals, and plants in arrested motion.
Seen together, Oldham and McFetridge present the continuum of today’s images—the hand-made, the infinitely self-reproducing.
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