Rebecca Ness

Galerie Marguo is pleased to present Stepping Out, a suite of new works by American artist Rebecca Ness. This marks the artist’s first exhibition in France. Comprising six large-scale canvases and five works on paper, the luscious blue and green still lifes and portraits in this series constitute a sort of nonlinear bildungsroman (emphasis on bild, German for image), or narrative of personal growth typically associated in literary terms with the so-called ‘coming of age’ novel.

Stepping Out denotes a turning point in Ness’ practice. Created over the summer of 2021, which saw her through a difficult period, the paintings reflect an outward shift from her claustrophobic interiors toward nature, as well as the psychological liberation of “walking out the door that you’ve used to hold yourself in.” In Flight (2021), a majestic portrait of a pigeon soaring against the blue sky, embodies this narrative: by assuming one’s innate strengths, it is possible to transcend a bad situation. Wryly self-aware, the lowly pigeon (ostensibly a proxy for the artist herself) is rendered with the scale and detail of an imperial bald eagle.

Drawn from the fabric of the artist’s personal life – experiences and observations, as well as art historical touchstones – these metaphorical works explore the way an individual piece fits into the whole, evoking the cycles and rhythms of the natural world. This story is rendered in the artist’s signature visual lexicon of intensely subjective, realistic yet cartoonish, vibrantly colored figuration. Until now, Ness’ paintings have been oriented inwards: depicting dizzyingly detailed domestic spaces brimming with everyday objects, or tightly cropped portraits with skewed vantages of objects, clothes, and limbs.

Ness excels in monumentalizing the mundane, painstakingly rendering her everyday world and fleeting impressions in oil, a notoriously slow and laborious medium. It’s been said that love is defined by what we pay attention to, and indeed Ness wields her attention like a tool, alongside her paints and brushes, to build her pictures. As a result, these new paintings teem with affection and gratitude, which is practiced by taking a globalized and granular look at your life while being both in the moment and outside of time.

The notions of worldmaking and the cyclical ebb and flow of life are movingly captured in a portrait of the artist’s father, an architect, who began gardening in defiance of the limitations that Multiple Sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects the nervous system, began imposing on his world. He is pictured seated on a chair with a contented expression, ensconced by towering sunflowers and a lush garden that bears the fruits of his labor. Dad in the Garden (2021) captures the simultaneity of a world that is continuously expanding and retracting.

Meditations on contrasting temporalities, and durational time are also explored in Herman Counts the Trees and A Happy Memory (both 2021). The former depicts a recent hike the artist took with her friends, Ellen and Katie. Their son, Herman, is strapped to his mother’s back as he counts the forest into existence, interpellating the world with fresh eyes as life unfolds before him. The infant’s newness, and unawareness of time and mortality, is underscored by the sunlight drenching his face, which comes in through the branches at a particular angle so as to situate this scene at a precise minute of the day. By contrast, A Happy Memory floats nebulously between past and present. Ness dips into history, borrowing Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe and dubbing it with the landscape of Western Massachusetts where she spent her weekends in college communing in nature with a close friend. Like a star, we meet his gaze across the gulf of many years, crystalized through the high-definition lens of the present in which the artist’s memory was constructed.

The French impressionist treatment of organic matter and ephemerality is referenced again in Olive Branch (2021). A sumptuous, conciliatory bouquet reminiscent of Van Gogh’s still lifes dominates the table, amidst rumpled student loan bills and a set of house keys. The artist and her girlfriend are discreetly reflected in the mirrored vase, positioning their dispute in a figurative rear-view mirror. Van Gogh’s own shift in palette and turn toward flowers and nature took place after leaving the Netherlands for Paris [1]. Included in the exhibition are two gouaches that also reference Van Gogh’s shoe portraits, which have been interpreted as symbolizing one’s passage through life. Drying Outside the Tent (2021) features two pairs of boots drying outside a camping tent that is again depicted in A Rustling (2021).

Here we find Ness and her girlfriend, illuminated by an iPhone in the dark of night. They sit up in suspense, contained within their little bubble, peering toward the greater world and its uncomfortable unknowns. Striking the darkest tone among the vibrantly hued works on view, A Rustling (2021) captures the vulnerability and trepidation inherent to the personal growth that characterizes this body of work.

Rebecca Ness (b.1992, Salem, Massachusetts) holds a BFA in Painting with a minor in History of Art and Architecture from Boston University, and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University. She has exhibited widely across the United States and in Europe. Recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Windows and Worlds’, Carl Kostyal Gallery (London, 2021); ‘Pieces of Mind’, Nino Mier Gallery (Los Angeles, 2020); ‘Twice Over’, 1969 Gallery (New York, 2019); and ‘Buttoned Down’, Yale Slifka Center for Jewish Life (New Haven, 2018). Select recent group exhibitions include: ‘36 Paintings’, Harper Books (The Hamptons, 2021), 11, Anton Kern Gallery (New York, 2021); ‘Show Me the Signs’, Blum & Poe (Los Angeles, 2020); and ‘Katherine Bradford, Hulda Guzman, Rebecca Ness’, Alexander Berggruen Gallery (New York, 2020).

Ness’ work is included in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, FL; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and the Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway. She is the recipient of several awards and grants such as the Jane Chermayeff Scholarship, from The New York Studio School, the Karin and Melvin Johnson Scholarship from The Chautauqua Institution, the Constantin Alajalov Scholarship from Boston University, and the Wilhelmina Denning Jackson Scholarship for the Arts and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Scholarship.

1 - Van Gogh is purported to have courted Agostina Segatori, the owner of the Café du Tambourin on the boulevard de Clichy, with paintings, rather than bouquets of flowers, “which would last forever.” (Musée d’Orsay)