Raquel Rabinovich presents Thresholds at Y Gallery

There is an invisible thread connecting Raquel Rabinovich’s work throughout the many decades of her artistic career. Her new series, Thresholds, is the latest addition to that thread. A threshold is an undefinable space in between places, a gateway, a point of entry, an opening, a portal, a space that connects and also separates the inside and the outside.. In Raquel Rabinovich’s Thresholds, her paintings and drawings seem to inhabit such an ambiguity. In these pieces, where the material becomes immaterial and where letters of the alphabet and text barely emerge into view, are at the edge of perception and thus require that the viewer experiences them in a slowed down temporality. They invite the viewers to step out of their preconceived assumptions and fixed ideas to enter a new territory: to go from the known into the unknown. Also included in the exhibition is a suite of watercolors dedicated to the poet Robert Kelly.

The use of text embedded into the paintings and drawings first appeared in Rabinovich’s work in her series Temples of the Blind Windows (1978-83), and continued in Invisible Cities (1984-85), Chhodrtens (1989-90), Gateless Gates (1995-97), Enfolded Darkness (1998), and Light Unworn (1998-2000). ‘Unwritten texts’ appear in her River Library drawings (2002- ) in which the artist uses mud from rivers from around the world as her medium. These drawings are like manuscripts, like pages of books, at once literal and metaphorical. Here mud functions like a text, providing a memory of our existence. Transcending the physicality of the material, the drawing is the text and the text is the drawing.

Raquel Rabinovich was born in Argentina in 1929, and has lived and worked in the United States since 1967. Her art has been informed by an underlying fascination with the concealed aspects of existence that we don’t see, or that seem to be invisible. Through the processes she explores, she tries to reveal how that which is concealed emerges into view. She tries to make the invisible visible. This paradox has been central to her art practice and is the essence of her artwork, now and for the last sixty years. Rabinovich has been the recipient of the Lee Krasner Award for Lifetime Achievement from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2011 as well as the recipient of Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants in 2006 and 2001. She was also awarded a National Endowment for the Arts US/France Fellowship in 1992, and a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in 1991. Rabinovich is included in the Oral History Program of the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art. She represented the United States in the 10th International Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador in 2009. Her work is included in many public and private collections including among others The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York City; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Museo de Arte Morderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina; World Bank Fine Art Collection, Washington, D.C.; Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia; The Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY, and El Museo del Barrio, New York City.

Raquel Rabinovich presents Thresholds at Y Gallery

Y Gallery is pleased to present Raquel Rabinovich’s Thresholds, her second solo show at the gallery.. The exhibition will consist of new paintings and drawings created between 2014 and 2017. This event anticipates her forthcoming retrospective at El Museo del Barrio, that will open in 2019, the year Rabinovich turns 90.

There is an invisible thread connecting Raquel Rabinovich’s work throughout the many decades of her artistic career. Her new series, Thresholds, is the latest addition to that thread. A threshold is an undefinable space in between places, a gateway, a point of entry, an opening, a portal, a space that connects and also separates the inside and the outside.. In Raquel Rabinovich’s Thresholds, her paintings and drawings seem to inhabit such an ambiguity. In these pieces, where the material becomes immaterial and where letters of the alphabet and text barely emerge into view, are at the edge of perception and thus require that the viewer experiences them in a slowed down temporality. They invite the viewers to step out of their preconceived assumptions and fixed ideas to enter a new territory: to go from the known into the unknown. Also included in the exhibition is a suite of watercolors dedicated to the poet Robert Kelly.

The use of text embedded into the paintings and drawings first appeared in Rabinovich’s work in her series Temples of the Blind Windows (1978-83), and continued in Invisible Cities (1984-85), Chhodrtens (1989-90), Gateless Gates (1995-97), Enfolded Darkness (1998), and Light Unworn (1998-2000). ‘Unwritten texts’ appear in her River Library drawings (2002- ) in which the artist uses mud from rivers from around the world as her medium. These drawings are like manuscripts, like pages of books, at once literal and metaphorical. Here mud functions like a text, providing a memory of our existence. Transcending the physicality of the material, the drawing is the text and the text is the drawing.

Raquel Rabinovich was born in Argentina in 1929, and has lived and worked in the United States since 1967. Her art has been informed by an underlying fascination with the concealed aspects of existence that we don’t see, or that seem to be invisible. Through the processes she explores, she tries to reveal how that which is concealed emerges into view. She tries to make the invisible visible. This paradox has been central to her art practice and is the essence of her artwork, now and for the last sixty years. Rabinovich has been the recipient of the Lee Krasner Award for Lifetime Achievement from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2011 as well as the recipient of Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants in 2006 and 2001. She was also awarded a National Endowment for the Arts US/France Fellowship in 1992, and a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in 1991. Rabinovich is included in the Oral History Program of the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art. She represented the United States in the 10th International Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador in 2009. Her work is included in many public and private collections including among others The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York City; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Museo de Arte Morderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina; World Bank Fine Art Collection, Washington, D.C.; Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia; The Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY, and El Museo del Barrio, Ne