Rachel Harrison
at Regen Projects

Rachel Harrison, Caution Kneeling Bus (installation view) (2022). Image courtesy of Regen Projects. Photo: Evan Bedford.

Rachel Harrison’s work wobbles between dichotomies of fact and fiction, sincerity and irony. The effect of the work can be one in which I, as a viewer, never feel in on: I’m afraid to take the artist at her word for fear of being seen as the fool who saw poetry in the trash heap. The only way I’ve reconciled my parallel affection for and confusion with Harrison’s work is to see it as a simultaneous rejection and reflection of narrative truths. In this artist’s hand, the truth of the matter requires a little fiction.

It is in the trash that Harrison’s tug of war between reality and surreality comes into sharp focus, revealing the larger sentiment—that if the whole world is falling apart, we might as well find solace in what we leave behind. In her current solo show at Regen Projects, Caution Kneeling Bus, Harrison’s sculptures appear as tableaus: an old tennis shoe is wedged under the weight of a platform, a medicine ball pauses in a curved indent. And while the sculptural works ground the show with their peculiar physicality, the exhibition largely focuses on a new series of paintings. Each is made with a digital document scanning app (Scanner Pro) that the artist uses to capture 3-dimensional spaces. The scanner renders her environments as flat pictures, which Harrison prints before applying haphazard gestures of neon paint. While the Scanner Pro paintings toggle between digital and analog in a manner that speaks to Harrison’s fondness for duality, the images are absent of the absurd arrangements that make Harrison’s sculptural works so engaging. The paintings highlight the artist’s calculated process and minimal gestures over the narrative friction that her found objects typically facilitate in the dimensional works.

In a new installation, sequestered in a side gallery, Harrison uses the texture of the discarded to bring the chaos of recent events—namely, last year’s January 6 insurrection—into sharp focus by rearranging and re-narrativizing items, or trash, that might have been left behind. Titled Hot Topic #2 (2022), the installation is a tangle of neon paracord and zip ties that webs together a collection of suspended refuse (a folding chair, a large slab of plywood) and littered objects on the floor (a six-pack of Coors Light, a painter’s bucket filled with clear liquid). Inkjet printouts with images of the QAnon Shaman, an Amazon shopping cart page for a Hickory defense stick, and news stills from the live coverage of the insurrection are strung across the rope. Intermittent disco party lights occasion the mess. This collection of pseudo-ephemera both conjures a kind of aftermath of the insurrection and fictionalizes a conspiracy theorist’s attempted plot. In a recent conversation with Harrison, art historian Darby English reflected that in Harrison’s work, “What you’re seeing doesn’t verify what you know.” In Hot Topic #2 and several of the other sculptures on view, what we see is akin to finding glimpses of the truth in our trash, even if it’s a truth we cannot yet reconcile with.

Harrison adds to the confusion by proposing that Infanta Margaret Theresa, who famously figures in Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656), was present at the capitol storming. Harrison’s insertion of Infanta’s art historical image within the strung-up inkjet prints—alongside very present figures like the QAnon Shaman—collapses the space between fact and fiction and heightens the fabricated nature of an imagined conspiracy theorist’s cave installed in a blue-chip gallery. With such maneuvers, Harrison makes the world’s absurdity a little clearer, highlighting that the very desire to make sense of the current world is, itself, nonsensical. 

Rachel Harrison: Caution Kneeling Bus runs from January 15–February 20, 2022 at Regen Projects (6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038).

Rachel Harrison, Hot Topic #2 (detail) (2022). Cast iron hooks, pigmented inkjet prints, parachute cord, wood, LED party light disco balls, and things brought to the insurrection, 11 x 17 x 28 feet; variable. © Rachel Harrison. Image courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects.

Rachel Harrison, Hot Topic #2 (detail) (2022). Cast iron hooks, pigmented inkjet prints, parachute cord, wood, LED party light disco balls, and things brought to the insurrection, 11 x 17 x 28 feet; variable. © Rachel Harrison. Image courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects.

Rachel Harrison, Venus (2021). Wood, polystyrene, plexiglass, acrylic, enamel, Venus statue, and a pair of New Balance 990 shoes. © Rachel Harrison. Image courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: Evan Bedford.

Rachel Harrison, Caution Kneeling Bus (installation view) (2022). © Rachel Harrison. Image courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: Evan Bedford.

Rachel Harrison, Cezanne (2021). Dye sublimation print, Flashe, and coarse pumice acrylic gel on aluminum, 62 x 48 inches. © Rachel Harrison. Image courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: Evan Bedford.

Rachel Harrison, Caution Kneeling Bus (installation view) (2022). © Rachel Harrison. Image courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: Evan Bedford.

Rachel Harrison, Cigar (2021). Dye sublimation print, Flashe, and coarse pumice acrylic gel on aluminum, 62 x 48 inches. © Rachel Harrison. Image courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: Evan Bedford.

Shannon Hebert Waldman is an arts writer, studio manager, and bookseller based in Los Angeles, CA. She holds a dual MA in Arts Administration & Policy and Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in F Newsmagazine, Hyperallergic, and Carla.

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