Coming Events Cast Their Light Before Them

521 West 26th Street, 1st Floor

25 April - 25 May 2024

Hollis Taggart is pleased to present Coming Events Cast Their Light Before Them, the Queens-based artist Rachel MacFarlane’s first solo show in New York City. Created over the past year and drawing from her experiences witnessing climate events in various places in the Americas, the works in the exhibition showcase MacFarlane’s masterful ability to create fantastical worlds filtered through her memories of real places. Her eerie canvases capture landscapes on the precipice of change; scenes that she translates from reality to artwork through her distinctive process of maquette-building.

High Tide, 2024

Oil on canvas

48 x 36 inches

High Tide, 2024

Oil on canvas

48 x 36 inches

Submerged in the Forest Flood, 2024

Oil on canvas

72 x 60 inches

Submerged in the Forest Flood, 2024

Oil on canvas

72 x 60 inches

After Storm in the Fen, 2024

Oil on canvas

63 x 90 inches

After Storm in the Fen, 2024

Oil on canvas

63 x 90 inches

Related Press:

The Art We’re Obsessed With in April 2024, Artsy, April 26, 2024
Hi, art lovers!, CBC, April 7, 2024
Marlborough Gallery to End Operations, Land Artist Fights Demolition of Work, Gaza Art Center Destroyed, and More: Morning Links for April 5, 2024, ARTnews, April 5, 2024
The Long History of Art Inspired by Solar Eclipses, Smithsonian Magazine, April 4, 2024

Flood Pour over Red Earth Crags, 2024

Oil on canvas

60 x 48 inches

Flood Pour over Red Earth Crags, 2024

Oil on canvas

60 x 48 inches

Break, 2024

Oil on canvas

26 x 36 inches

Break, 2024

Oil on canvas

26 x 36 inches

At its core, MacFarlane’s work is about lamenting the loss of specific landscapes through creating and depicting new worlds where humans are no longer the protagonists. MacFarlane spends much of her time immersed in unique geographical environments – often ones that have been heavily impacted by climate change-related weather events. While working on her newest body of work, MacFarlane spent extensive time in places ranging from the Adirondacks to Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park in Maine, and from Prince Edward Island right after it had been hit by Hurricane Fiona to Clearwater, Manitoba during unprecedented flooding. As has always been her practice, MacFarlane does not document while she travels, instead preferring to absorb the atmosphere of a place and spend time really immersed in its sights and sounds. Upon returning to her studio, MacFarlane transforms her observations into three-dimensional maquettes created out of paper, paint, and plastic.

Perfomance at Night, 2024

Oil on Canvas

42 x 78 inches

Perfomance at Night, 2024

Oil on Canvas

42 x 78 inches

The Scolding Sky at Athabasca Glacier, 2024

Oil on Linen

30 x 36 inches

The Scolding Sky at Athabasca Glacier, 2024

Oil on Linen

30 x 36 inches

Squall Lines, 2024

Oil on canvas

72 x 60 inches

Squall Lines, 2024

Oil on canvas

72 x 60 inches

Lava River Rolling, 2024

Oil on canvas

30 x 36 inches

Lava River Rolling, 2024

Oil on canvas

30 x 36 inches

Passageway, 2024

Oil on canvas

26 x 36 inches

Passageway, 2024

Oil on canvas

26 x 36 inches

A Portentous Sky, 2024

Oil on canvas

42 x 78 inches

A Portentous Sky, 2024

Oil on canvas

42 x 78 inches

As MacFarlane describes it, a lot of play takes place at her collage table, as she manufactures new spaces based loosely on the spirit of specific ones, drawing on a myriad of influences from theatre and architecture to the world-building of science fiction literature and movies. The paintings in this show were specifically influenced by MacFarlane’s research into the Augsburg Book of Miracles, a manuscript depicting celestial and weather phenomena made in Augsburg, Germany in the sixteenth century. MacFarlane was moved and inspired by how these anonymous illustrators centuries before her were also dedicated to tracking warning signs in the landscape and to recording them in creative ways.

Fighting Trees, 2024

Oil on canvas

60 X 48 inches

Fighting Trees, 2024

Oil on canvas

60 X 48 inches

The Event, 2024

Oil on canvas

30 x 48 inches

The Event, 2024

Oil on canvas

30 x 48 inches

Performers, 2024

Oil on canvas

24 x 20 inches

Performers, 2024

Oil on canvas

24 x 20 inches

Over and Under, 2024

Oil on canvas

30 x 48 inches

Over and Under, 2024

Oil on canvas

30 x 48 inches

Tree Fall, 2024

Oil on canvas

48 x 36 inches

Tree Fall, 2024

Oil on canvas

48 x 36 inches

While she describes the model-building as a distancing method, it is also one that creates intimacy, as the scale shift to a shallow box model leads to the creation of a miniature world we can literally hold in our hands versus the enormity of the environment. After MacFarlane distills the memory of a place into an object, she further transforms it into its final form on the canvas, using bold colors and thick brushwork that highlights the painterliness and artifice of her landscapes. As art critic Barry Schwabsky notes in the catalogue essay, these multiple translations and transformations allow MacFarlane to “operate with and against flatness and depth, illusion and physicality, naturalness and theatricality… Her work gives pleasure but also warns that with all these unavoidable antitheses, the choice of one pole or the other would be hopeless, and we have to learn to live with the tensions between them.”

Maquette for Submerged in the Forest Flood, 2024

Paper collage7 1/2 x 6 1/4 x 3 7/8 in. (19.1 x 15.9 x 9.8 cm)

Maquette for Submerged in the Forest Flood, 2024

Paper collage7 1/2 x 6 1/4 x 3 7/8 in. (19.1 x 15.9 x 9.8 cm)

Maquette for ‘Perfomance at Night’, 2024

Paper collage

D 2

H 6

W 11 7/16

Maquette for ‘Perfomance at Night’, 2024

Paper collage

D 2

H 6

W 11 7/16

Maquette for ‘A Portentous Sky’, 2024

Paper collage

D 2 1/16

H 6 ⅛

W 11 ¼

Maquette for ‘A Portentous Sky’, 2024

Paper collage

D 2 1/16

H 6 ⅛

W 11 ¼

Maquette for ‘After Storm in the Fen’ , 2024

Paper collage

8 1/4 x 11 7/8 x 4 1/4 in. (21 x 30.2 x 10.8 cm)

Maquette for ‘After Storm in the Fen’ , 2024

Paper collage

8 1/4 x 11 7/8 x 4 1/4 in. (21 x 30.2 x 10.8 cm)

Maquette for ‘Fighting Trees’, 2024Paper collage

D 6

H 8 ⅜

W 6 ¼

Maquette for ‘Fighting Trees’, 2024Paper collage

D 6

H 8 ⅜

W 6 ¼

Maquette for ‘Perfomance at Night’, 2024Paper collage

D 2

H 6

W 11 7/16

Maquette for ‘Perfomance at Night’, 2024Paper collage

D 2

H 6

W 11 7/16

Maquette for Lava River Rolling, 2024

Paper collage

8 x 6 1/4 x 3 1/2 in. (20.3 x 15.9 x 8.9 cm)

Maquette for Lava River Rolling, 2024

Paper collage

8 x 6 1/4 x 3 1/2 in. (20.3 x 15.9 x 8.9 cm)

Catalogue

To order click here.

Essay by Barry Schwabsky, 2024

Publisher: Hollis Taggart, New York

Design: McCall Associates, New York

Printer: Point B Solutions, Minneapolis

Softcover, Color illustrations

32 pages, 9 3/4 x 7 7/8 inches (24.77 x 20 cm)

ISBN 979-8-9888376-6-4

$20.00

This catalogue has been published on the occasion of the exhibition “Rachel MacFarlane: Coming Events Cast Their Light Before Them” organized by Hollis Taggart, New York, and presented from April 25–May 25, 2024.