Corey Rubin

Three Four Three Four is pleased to announce I can remember your face, a solo exhibition by Corey Rubin. Rubin’s work confronts issues of masculinity, maturation, and above all, painting. For I can remember your face, Rubin has created six meticulously developed paintings laboriously executed in swaths of blue. Each monochrome canvas, uniform in size, carries a cryptic message scratched into the heavily treated surface. Rubin creates high gloss surfaces as a means of disguising text and enticing the viewers to twist and contort their eyes while appearing before the work. There is a sense of confidence, pride, vulnerability, and shame that seeps its way from the works and into the audience, as if one were gazing into a mirror. Rubin’s works display a constant longing for something greater, something simultaneously obtainable and out of reach. Something there and not there.

The adjacent wall houses a work with an opposite energy. In contrast to the multitudinous layers of paint in the monochrome series, the only painted surface amongst the raw linen is an image of the REI logo. An excerpt from the company’s “about” page reads as such: At REI, we love to get outside and play, and we know first-hand the importance of quality outdoor gear…By staying true to our roots, we've earned a place on FORTUNE magazine's list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" every year since the rankings began in 1998. The company strives to create a familiarity with its consumer base by placing an emphasis on play, enthusiasm, and a carefree spirit. Similarly, Rubin embodies this attention-defying demeanor with highlights from his adolescence scribbled in red marker throughout the linen. These marks, combined with an inverted REI logo, allude to temporal, exciting thoughts and memories that are equally important as those evoked in the monochrome series.

The works convey two approaches to painting and two distinct hands that the artist possesses. There is a certain false confidence and bravado that accompanies the work, sentiments that Corey Rubin embodies in I can remember your face.