The Upcoming
  • Culture
    • Art
    • Cinema & Tv
      • Movie reviews
      • Film festivals
      • Shows
    • Food & Drinks
      • News & Features
      • Restaurant & bar reviews
      • Interviews & Recipes
    • Literature
    • Music
      • Live music
    • Theatre
  • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
  • What’s On
    • Art exhibitions
    • Theatre shows
  • Tickets
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Interviews
  • Competitions
  • Special events
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureArt

Jennifer Rubell – Not Alone at Stephen Friedman Gallery

Jennifer Rubell – Not Alone at Stephen Friedman Gallery | Exhibition review
9 September 2015
Alejandra Arrieta
Avatar
Alejandra Arrieta
9 September 2015

Exhibition and art

Alejandra Arrieta

Not Alone + Stephen Friedman Gallery

★★★★★

Dates

4th September 2015 - 2nd October 2015

Entry

Free

Links & directions

WebsiteMap

Even with the growing democratisation of art and art-making, it is still strange to find exhibitions that challenge the boundaries between spectator and artist, demystifying the standard museum and gallery experience. Jennifer Rubell’s newest exhibition achieves this with a very deep and moving reflection.

Featuring the works created  throughout the first three years of her life as a mother, the American artist explores themes of origin, subjectivity and otherness. Eight subtly political and finely integrated pieces engage all the senses through interactive sculpture, food performance, painting and film. The show comments on the connections among humans, and between humans and non-humans, inspiring care and fondness for animals and inanimate objects.

Glass is a fragile crystal baby that is handed out to fondle upon arrival at the exhibition, positioning the spectator in a vulnerable place while delivering a responsibility for the art object. This weirdly exhilarating experience also brings violence, repression and fear into play. The bodily tension that results from this moment is resolved by the next piece – Them – where one must break the shell of a hard-boiled egg, season it, and eat it. Two nuns, a drunkard and a bottle, a rabbit and a hunter, and a squirrel and a walnut are some of the many entertaining figures of salt-and-pepper shakers, that depict stereotypical pairings as different forms of companionship and dependency.

The last piece of the show, Posing, consummates the connection with the artist and her conceptual flirtations. It invites the spectator to disrobe and stand close to a film screen showing the artist naked on top of a horse. It is a modelling act for the paintings that make up the previous set of works in the exhibition. In a Las Meninas kind of composition, one is immersed in an intersubjective experience that echoes notions of origin and creation. What appears at first to be a democratisation of the art object ends as a complete liberation of creative authorship achieved by the reciprocating gazes between the spectator and the artist on screen.

Not Alone is a reflection on the creative act, as art-making and as motherhood, and an inspection of the never-ending genesis of spectatorship experiences. Provocative, meticulously crafted and well-rounded, it is an exhibition that will be seized by ardent contemporary art lovers, and more than a few sceptical bystanders.                              

★★★★★

Alejandra Arrieta
Photos: Aleksandra Rozanska

Jennifer Rubell: Not Alone is at Stephen Friedman Gallery from 4th September until 2nd October 2015, for further information visit here.

Related ItemsartcraftsJennifer RubellreviewSpectatorship

More in Art

Decentralise at Somerset House Online

★★★★★
James White
Read More

No Holds Barred: The Life and Art of Matthew Lanyon

James White
Read More

Shai Baitel announced as inaugural artistic director of Modern Art Museum Shanghai

The editorial unit
Read More

The National Gallery online: Lockdown’s top 20 most viewed paintings

The editorial unit
Read More

Art 2021: London’s best virtual exhibitions from home

Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Ten artistic depictions of the Christmas story through the ages

James White
Read More

Five gifts for art lovers this Christmas

Emma-Jane Betts
Read More

Five alternative art exhibitions for Christmas 2020

Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s Adoration at the National Gallery

★★★★★
Anna Souter
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Exhibition and art

Alejandra Arrieta

Not Alone + Stephen Friedman Gallery

★★★★★

Dates

4th September 2015 - 2nd October 2015

Entry

Free

Links & directions

WebsiteMap

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Kaleo – Surface Sounds
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • London’s Michelin-starred restaurants open al fresco right now – and all those re-opening in May
    Food & Drinks
  • Weezer with the LA Philharmonic and YOLA at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Online
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • The Motherhood Project: An interview with creator and curator Katherine Kotz
    Theatre
  • Ride or Die
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Sheep Without a Shepherd
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Forget Everything and Run
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Turtle Opera: An interview with Turtle Key Arts artistic director Charlotte Cunningham
    Theatre
  • Laddie: The Man Behind the Movies
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Fear of Rain
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • 50 Next unveils the new generation of food industry pioneers
    Food & Drinks
  • Arlo the Alligator Boy
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • London’s Michelin-starred restaurants open al fresco right now – and all those re-opening in May
    Food & Drinks
  • Campfire in Kings Cross: Two Tribes deliver everything you’ve been missing with a night of beer, BBQ and live music
    Food & Drinks
  • Live from the Barbican: Moses Boyd
    ★★★★★
    Live music
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

The 200 Club by Bompass & Parr at The Factory | Restaurant review
And Then Come the Nightjars at Theatre503 | Theatre review