Rachel LaBine

Lives and works in New York, NY and Mexico City, Mexico

Artist statement

The images that I layer together cohere into paintings and leaded glass that depict spaces as living beings. In my work there’s usually a container, and a movement of something through it, which transforms both the container and the one who witnesses the movement. Reflection, one image rhyming with another to create two, like a doorframe, is one sort of container. I’m interested in how the self is formed through mirrors of many kinds. Moments from childhood in which I remember learning to be an image appear in works like 'Leda', where neon lights illuminate and simultaneously conceal a transparent threshold, reflecting weather from an unseen place. In 'Corner Store Votive', silhouettes from a beloved childhood movie spliced with ironwork at the entrance to my current apartment come alive as in a cartoon. Translation of a space to a painting requires cutting a dimension (3D to 2D) which remains palpable, continues to speak and stretch. One way this dimension emerges is through a process of removing parts of a painting with vinyl masking, a removal that also reveals, allowing bright layers underneath to shine through, as in 'Two sides of a third lake' and 'Peripheral Myth'. The latter exemplifies an enduring dynamic in my practice between structural or architectural elements, and an ambient flooding of color (in painting) or light (in glass and installation). In part this dynamic has to do with an actual flood that I experienced as a child, that taught me about continual...

Artwork