Whitney Claflin, Rochelle Feinstein at Drei
There was an odd solace in visiting Whitney Claflin and Rochelle Feinstein’s duo present on the Fourth of July. As the US’ tragic devolution has ramped up in latest weeks, it felt apt to spend the nation’s Independence Day amidst these New York-based artists enduring engagement—private and political, summary and hyper-specific—with dwelling in America. Feinstein stitched worming traces of hand-dyed, rainbow yarn into a gaggle of drop fabric work that embrace American Sampler / 2020 (all works 2022), by which she makes use of the threads to hint the contours of a puzzle of light-washed pink and blue state-like shapes. The stops and begins of colourful embroidery are garish and hopeful, like a last-ditch try to metaphorically heal the nation. Claflin’s Chore Chart renders a field of Jiffy model corn muffin combine in oil, ink, and pencil on canvas. This emblem of Americana is without delay monument and riddle, blurring traces between commemoration and critique.
Each artists’ works are primarily involved with portray, whether or not by muddling its materiality, as in Claflin’s The Worst TV I Have Ever Owned, or by confronting its weighty legacies with wonky grids, as in Feinstein’s Sequel. Claflin was Feinstein’s pupil simply over a decade in the past and adopted her trainer’s polyphonic strategy to artmaking. Each artists forged their web extensively by way of what can compel and represent a piece. Right here, Feinstein confirmed a cell of laminated Polaroids alongside drooping drop fabric work that had been tacked to the wall, whereas Claflin’s wispy, scraggly line traversed a various group of small oil work, a disco ball sculpture, and an ink drawing of a waifish creature holding a placard declaring “neither behemoth.” There was a way that each one the mess that’s life, politics, and paint was up for grabs, jumbled right into a tenuous cohesion—not order or decision, however one thing like that means.
