Rachel Phillips “He Said What?”

Microscope Gallery

[Image: Rachel Phillips “He Said What?” (2018) acrylic paint and mica powder on canvas, 34 x 34 in.]

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Microscope presents its 2019-2020 season with “He Said What?”, the first solo exhibition at the gallery of paintings by Bushwick-based artist Rachel Phillips.

“He Said What?” features a selection of medium to large scale acrylic and mixed-media on canvas works most, completed this year, with a few from previous years. Phillips is known for fusing opposite approaches to form, image, subject matter and other elements, such as “abstraction and expression, humor and sadness.”

Cartoon-like figures, with strong personalities, and various animated objects are situated within multi-colored and often geometrical spaces. Pigments and mica powder are added to the paint to heighten the cartoonish qualities of the colors and an illusion of dimensionality is enhanced in many with glitter, feathers, paper, aluminum foil, or other elements. However, Phillips’ emphasis on the process of painting — through varied applications of paint and serendipitous marks — grounds the works in real life.

Each painting becomes a unique microcosm existing in a realm between reality and fantasy built from single point of interest – a color, a line, a phrase, an emotion – in a semi-automatic process similar to doodling, into a composition that incorporates elements of the artist’s personal experience as well as the broader culture.

In the title piece “He Said What?” (2018, acrylic paint and mica powder on canvas, 34 x 34”), for example, the frowning, deflated, tragicomic figure with the blue hat simultaneously represents several possible narratives: that of the artist; that of the fictional character; the viewer’s projected experience; and the current collective reaction to a certain Twitter user’s daily tweets.

Rachel Phillips is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has exhibited in the US and internationally including in New York at Orgy Park, Nurture Art, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Cindy Rucker Gallery, Walter Wickiser Gallery, Brian Morris Gallery, and Galerie Protégé as well as at the Gran Sasso Science Institute in L’Aquila, Italy, and Salon Space, Berlin, Germany. In 2018 her work was presented in a solo exhibition at Chashama and a two-person exhibition at 490 Atlantic Gallery. Phillips’ work has been featured in Artnet, ArtMaze, (print), Bedford & Bowery, Hyperallergic, and Two Coats of Paint, among others.