“Each Other,” Andrew Francis and Rina Goldfield on the 7th Floor

Notes:

1. This show suggests rupture with punctures, cracks, volcanic eruptions, and the dislocation of body parts. But because the pieces are built around rupture, or because rupture is incorporated into a piece from the beginning, it is used as a strategy of construction.

2. Rina uses staples, thread, or in the case of the volcano paintings, beautiful varnish to “repair” rupture. These decisions, except for the varnish, allow or force the images to be objects. These function as solutions to a problem posed in paint.

3. Andrew’s bather sets up a moment of realization when the viewer first sees that the body parts don’t, in a sense, belong to one another. Each body chunk—two hands, two knees, and a head/torso piece—float separately in the confined space of the tub.

4. The bather piece is made up of poetic moments, some planned and others unplanned by design. The slight shifting in water of the body parts-as-islands. The porcelain tub. The chin touching the chest.

5. The texture of the paper becomes incredibly important in Rina’s crumpled drawings. Could the drawings have worked with less other information? And I also wonder that about the piece made by two identically sized panels separated slightly. The folds embedded in the lightly treated canvas have much to say. Did the piece need more information?

Henry