45 Wyllys Ave, Middletown, CT 06459, United States
In 1989, Rachel received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art from Wesleyan University.
2011
From left to right: Elisabeth Sussman, an art curator, and artist Rachel Harrison discuss Paul Thek’s "Burning Book" (1975), January 2011. Photograph by Tiffany Oelfke.
2011
From left to right: Elisabeth Sussman, an art curator, and artist Rachel Harrison discuss Paul Thek’s "Burning Book" (1975), January 2011. Photograph by Tiffany Oelfke.
45 Wyllys Ave, Middletown, CT 06459, United States
In 1989, Rachel received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art from Wesleyan University.
Ethnicity:
Rachel's parents were both of Polish and Jewish descent.
Rachel Harrison was born in 1966, in New York City, New York, United States. Her mother was born in New Jersey and her father was born in Brooklyn, New York.
In 1989, Rachel received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art from Wesleyan University, where her mentors, a sculptor Jeffrey Schiff and a composer Alvin Lucier, had a strong impact on her oeuvre.
In 1996, Harrison held her first exhibition "Should home windows or shutters be required to withstand a direct hit from an eight-foot-long two-by-four shot from a cannon at 34 miles an hour, without creating a hole big enough to let through a three-inch sphere?" at the Arena Gallery in New York City. Since that time, the artist has included a wide range of materials in her work, such as cans of peas, honey, papier-mâché and trash bags.
In the 1990's, Harrison held a post of an educator, teaching art classes at elementary schools. In 1999, she moved to Columbia University, where she taught photography and, later, sculpture. Moreover, Rachel served as a teacher in the art departments of other educational establishments, including Yale University, Cooper Union and Bard College.
In 2013, Rachel was commissioned to create the sculpture, entitled "Moore to the Point", in the Dallas City Hall Plaza. The work calls attention to how people interact with works of public art.
Harrison's selected solo exhibitions include "The Look of Dress-Separates", Greene Naftali Gallery, New York City (1997), "Patent Pending: Beveled Rasp Sac", Greene Naftali Gallery, New York City (1999), "Whitney Biennial", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (2002), "New Work", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2004), "Posh Floored as Ali G Tackles Becks", Camden Arts Centre, London (2004), "Car Stereo Parkway", Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2005), "Voyage Of The Beagle",Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich (2007), "Conquest of the Useless", Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010), "The Help", Greene Naftali Gallery, New York City (2012), "Three Young Farmers", Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2015), among others.
Important group exhibitions of the artist include Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2004), Whitney Biennial (2008), "Gloria: Robert Rauschenberg & Rachel Harrison", Cleveland Museum of Art (2015) and "America Is Hard to See", Whitney Museum of American Art (2015).
Currently, Rachel lives and works in New York City.
Rachel Harrison is one of the most exciting artists, making sculptures today. She is known for her assemblages of found and constructed objects, that carry a provisional quality, a wry sense of humor and an all-embracing intelligence. Playing with materials, ranging from plinth, pedestal and corrugated cardboard to plastic ketchup bottles, insulated travel mugs and Barbie's wheelchair-bound friend, Harrison creates colorful, canny, thought-provoking constructions.
In 2011, Rachel received the Calder Prize. Later, in 2015, she got the Anonymous Was A Woman Award.
The artist's works are held in a number of public institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, and Cleveland Museum of Art.
Describing her approach as "intuition combined with thinking", Rachel Harrison engages with art history and contemporary culture, and the role of the artist and sculpture in society, in her own flamboyant, totemic sculptures and installations. The DIY look of her works, often shown in groups in multifaceted, multimedia installations, belies their careful craftsmanship. Her sculptures appear as semi-figurative monoliths, assembled from abstract forms and consumer products, including canned goods, magazines, plastic food and wigs. Through them, Harrison questions the traditional function of figurative sculpture to memorialize and idealize, while drawing attention to the deluge of trivial, throwaway objects, by which people are surrounded. She often honors, or sends up, famous historical and contemporary figures in her works, including "Tiger Woods" (2007), whose focal point is a can of green tea with the image of a famous golfer, Arnold Palmer, on it.
Quotations: "I want people to be real with art, to be conscious and present with the object in order to experience it."
