Text by Negar Azimi, Anne Dressen, Lars Bang Larsen, Solveig Řvstebř.
“The work of Rachel Harrison is both the zestiest and the least digestible in contemporary art. It may also be the most important.” –Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker
Hbk, 11.75 x 9 in. / 220 pgs / 230 color. | 7/4/2023 | In stock $55.00
Edited by Susanne Figner, Martin Germann. Foreword by Veit Görner, Philippe Van Cauteren. Text by Diederich Diederichsen, Susanne Figner, Alex Kitnick.
Pbk, 9 x 11.5 in. / 184 pgs / 240 color. | 10/31/2013 | In stock $55.00
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co./Lévy Gorvy Dayan. Text by Rachel Harrison.
Guided by a desire to illuminate and inspire reflection on the sculptural form, Dominique Lévy of LGDR invited American artist Rachel Harrison (born 1966) to curate a presentation of 20th-century sculpture. The exhibition that emerged comprises a group of works that consider Modernism’s devotion to that most fundamental of subjects: the human figure. Stage Fright features works by Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brâncusi, Marcel Duchamp, Marisol, Alberto Giacometti and Alina Szapocznikow that represent the body in extremis—shown ruptured in pieces or pared down to the essentials. The individual pieces act as surrogates that stand in for the whole. Taken together, the works on view embody various conceptions of personhood as routed through objects, whether rendered with aching specificity, as in the clefts and folds of Szapocznikow’s plaster Ventre (Belly) (1968), or invoked as a generic type, as in Marisol’s totemic couple The Blacks (1962). Richly illustrated with installation views from the exhibition, Stage Fright features a new text by Harrison—framed as a dialogue between filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and figure skater Peggy Fleming—that critically examines the presentation and the artist’s own practice and approach.
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co./Astrup Fearnley Museum. Text by Negar Azimi, Anne Dressen, Lars Bang Larsen, Solveig Řvstebř.
Sitting in a Room highlights the recent work of New York–based artist Rachel Harrison (born 1966), who takes a porous, hybrid approach to objects both made and found. Spanning mediums that include sculpture, drawing, photography and painting, Harrison’s nimble, layered method has always escaped easy categorization. Abstraction is shot through with vernacular references to jarring, often comic effect, as formalist concerns are forced to vie with rogue elements from the outside world. Published in conjunction with her exhibition at the Astrup Fearnley Museet, this volume—which takes its name from a seminal work of sound art by Alvin Lucier—documents the show’s distinctive format, with each gallery conceived as a specific room. From Sculpture Court to Town Square, Gym, Living Room and Cabinet, the exhibition places the viewer in contexts both intimate and public, and the original essays commissioned here expand and deepen those trajectories. Designed by Joseph Logan in close collaboration with the artist, this richly illustrated volume includes Harrison's own photography of Sitting in a Room and reflects her unique approach to the making of both exhibitions and the catalogs that outlast them.
Published by Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College/Whitechapel Gallery/Portikus. Text by Tom Eccles, Iwona Blazwick, Jack Bankowsky, David Joselit, Paul Chan, John Kelsey, Allan McCollum, Lucy Raven, Amy Sillman, Steven Stern.
Rachel Harrison (born 1966) is one of the most exciting artists making sculptures today. Her assemblages of found and constructed objects carry a provisional quality, a wry sense of humor and an all-embracing intelligence. Playing with materials ranging from plinth, pedestal and corrugated cardboard to plastic ketchup bottles, insulated travel mugs and Barbie's wheelchair-bound friend, Harrison creates colorful, canny, thought-provoking constructions that are worthy peers of Rauschenberg's Combines. This volume, the most comprehensive monograph of Harrison's sculpture, video and painting to date, provides documentation of the past 15 years of her work and includes essays by Tom Eccles, David Joselit, Iwona Blazwick and Jack Bankowsky, plus contributions from Paul Chan, John Kelsey, Allan McCollum, Lucy Raven, Amy Sillman and Steven Stern.
PUBLISHER
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.5 x 12.25 in. / 272 pgs / 245 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 8/31/2010 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 100
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781936192038TRADE List Price: $65.00 CAD $75.00
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Heike Munder. Text by Ellen Seifermann, John Kelsey, Heike Munder.
Gracing the cover jacket of Rachel Harrison's highly anticipated second monograph is an informal monument to the man who holds the Americas' namesake. The only hint to this memorial for the 15th century Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, is an apple resting on an outcropping of neon-green cement; of course the fact that the apple is not only artificial but has a bite taken out of it suggests otherwise to the discovery of these "Edenic" continents. This slight yet important fact raises the basic conceit of if i did it: the active disavowal of art's political function as a museological testament to the "progress" of social history. By tossing off this monumental propensity, Harrison builds "antimonuments;" not so much sculptures but lumpen aggregates of pop psychology. In addition to Vespucci, throughout the book, one finds that celebrities Johnny Depp and Tiger Woods are included in a pantheon with John Locke and 18th century Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli, meanwhile Al Gore checks the temperature, Claude Levi-Strauss checks the door with a taxidermied hen and rooster and a bi-curious Alexander the Great is the master of ceremonies. The title, taken from O.J. Simpson's infamous "hypothetical" account of his murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Donald Goldman, groups this role call of high- and low- brow idols into a nonhierarchical tableau where cultural and political value are allotted only where one sees fit.
Published by Milwaukee Art Museum. Essays by Stefano Basilico, Gareth James and John Kelsey. Foreword by David Gordon.
Brooklyn-based artist Rachel Harrison examines the condition of looking, wanting and having via works and installations that hybridize the sculptural, the painterly and the photographic. With a finely tuned balance of sharp wit, wry sympathy and sensitive insight, she layers unusual materials into a whole. Currents 30 combines an exhibition catalogue with various artist projects.
PUBLISHER Milwaukee Art Museum
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 8.25 x 10 in. / 64 pgs / 85 color / 5 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/2/2004 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2003
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780944110980TRADE List Price: $19.95 CAD $25.00
The Help, A Companion Guide is based on images surrounding Rachel Harrison's 2012 solo show at Greene Naftali Gallery entitled The Help. The exhibition shares its title with Harrison’s photograph of the back door maintenance entrance to Duchamp’s "Étant donnés," which is visible in the exhibition galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and alludes to the entangled roles of the Artist, the Muse and the Help. The Help, A Companion Guide showcases visual and conceptual elements that Harrison used in the making of The Help: from early Google image searches and reference materials, to documentation of the installation process and its attendant "help," to selected details of the final sculptural works. Harrison creates visual and temporal rhymes that playfully link her finished sculptural works to a constellation of materials and services that express the immanent sociality at stake in every work of art.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Susanne Figner, Martin Germann. Foreword by Veit Görner, Philippe Van Cauteren. Text by Diederich Diederichsen, Susanne Figner, Alex Kitnick.
Since the 1990s, Rachel Harrison (born 1966) has developed a colorful and delightfully grotesque sculptural idiom out of the most contemporary detritus--styrofoam, plastic buckets, vacuum cleaners--which she blends with slapstick humor and art historical and pop cultural references. Fake Titel presents sculptures and drawings from three recent series: The Help (2012), the large-scale installation Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (2011) and the photographic suite Sunset Series (2000–2012). The Help examines the roles of the artist, the muse and the "help," mixing found objects with abstract forms; Incidents of Travel in Yucatan is a mixed-media installation including a wall of pedestals, autonomous sculptures and video; and the Sunset Series comprises 31 photographs of a single source image, a photograph of a sunset. In each photograph in the series, shot on 35mm film, the artist physically manipulates the found snapshot to create a new image.
Rachel Harrison: Sitting in a Room
Rachel Harrison: Museum With Walls
Rachel Harrison: If I Did It
Rachel Harrison: Currents 30
The Help, A Companion Guide eBook
Rachel Harrison: Fake Titel