Bio / Statement / Contact / C.V. / Press
Bio
REBECCA CHAMBERLAIN has cut herself a wide path. Whether designing the furniture and exterior for PUSH jewelry in lower Manhattan, clothing for Uniqlo and Gap Inc., exhibiting her sculpture and paintings in the United States and Europe, or lending her voice to musical projects from rock to ambient performance ensembles, Chamberlain brings a freshness to each project, stemming from her many interests.
Chamberlain started her first clothing line, IOTA, while still an undergraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her fascination with high concept clothing led her to direct and consult for several other lines (e.g.: Elbridge, Wares and Mella). Her most recent venture in the design world is helping to launch a handbag line and re-imaging a high design children’s furniture and bedding company.
Her travels during a tenure as men's wear designer for Old Navy influenced her first sculptural project, broadly entitled KAWAII / tête á tête. The KAWAII sculptures - based on collected ephemera and Victorian diorama - have been shown since 1999 at exhibitions throughout the United States. Through the KAWAII Series, Chamberlain received a commission for a number of sculptures and to co-direct the redesign of Push jewelry store in lower Manhattan, expanding her sculptural work to furniture and interior design.
Upon completion of the PUSH project Chamberlain turned back to drawing and on to painting. This body of work (see statement below) is ongoing and has been included in group shows at 303 Gallery and Knoedler Project Space in New York, Champion Fine Art in LA and Agenzio04 in Bologna, Italy, among others. Chamberlain’s first solo exhibit of this work will be later this year with the Judi Rotenberg Gallery in Boston. In addition to her visual projects, Chamberlain has performed with Research (Electra Records) and for the installation art/ performance/ musical trio, Infant Reader (Beggar’s Banquet Sulfur Records label). She is currently working with Maxi Geil! & PlayColt, an art world based rock and performance group. They have held events at MoMA, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Bloomberg Space in London as well regular gigs in local New York venues. The band was featured in the Performance Art Biennial, PERFORMA05 and they released their first full-length album in 2007 under the British label, FRED Music. This year will take the band to Austin as part of the performance art festival, FUZEBOX and into the recording studio to work on their second full length album.
statement
Rebecca Chamberlain's glowing mid-century interiors seem at once frozen in time and pregnant with anticipation. Pristine nearly to the point of seeming antiseptic, the gleaming surfaces and perfectly aligned furniture project an impression of cold efficiency and complete control. Rarely occupied, and even then only by suggestively placed chairs or dim shadows nearly out of sight, the environments she depicts seem insular, safe, and protected - an impression heightened by our frequent inability to see the chaotic outside world through their windows. When it does appear, we see only glimpses of serene, often wooded landscapes through the windows, which only serve to heighten the placid mood.
The spaces thus depicted have an unmistakeable identity, which is clearly a gendered one. Chamberlain sees the offices she depicts as primarily male spaces, as they were at the time they were built and furnished. However, soft elements like plants introduce a touch of the feminine. Similarly, unoccupied chairs seem receptive, passive, listening and waiting patiently for the moment when they will be rendered useful. The domestic interiors, on the other hand, might traditionally be seen as feminine, but in the case of these modernist rooms, one sees hard, geometric, vertical elements that suggest, at the very least, the hand of the (generally male) architect at work.
Architecture and building are thematized in the very materials used to produce these elegant drawings. The paper is vintage tracing paper of the sort used by architects and builders, which may be rolled up and unfurled a hundred times without being damaged. Its age is roughly the same as the rooms depicted on it, so it forges a physical link to the past that encourages us to imagine wandering these spaces at the time of their completion. The pigment in the earlier works is ballpoint ink, a tricky, sticky, substance that bcomes a kind of viscous and uncontrollable enamel when mixed with a medium of acetone or alcohol. The recent move to lithographic inks allows for more color range while preserving the desirable iridescence and viscosity of the ballpoint ink. The tension between the rigid perfection of the environments and the unpredictability of the medium becomes a metaphor for the struggle to control our lives in an dangerous world.
Chamberlain's work, for all of its beauty, has at its heart an awareness of deep social anxieties. Whether exploring and questioning the gendered nature of design and the strictures it places on the choices we make, or desperately trying to give structure and permanence to our unpredictable and entropic world, it encourages in the viewer a general critical appreciation of the the link between psychology and space, exposing a little-appreciated mechanism for the assertion and manipulation of identity and power in our quotidian existence.
--
Elizabeth M. Grady
contact
REBECCA ELDRIGE CHAMBERLAIN
email: rebecca@rebecca-chamberlain.com
tel: (917) 679-9056
C.v.
REBECCA E. CHAMBERLAIN
Born Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2009
Solo exhibition, Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston, MA
2008
“Death Is Not The End”, 31 Grand, NYC
“Summer ”, Knoedler Project Space, NYC
“Places”, Jim Kempner Fine Art, NYC
2007
“Just a Ghostly Paper Sigh”, 31 Grand Gallery, NYC
“Interiors”, Imoderni, Miami, FL
“At Work”, Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston, MA
"Three for Society", 303 Gallery, NYC
"In Pursuit of Happiness", Sarah Bowen Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2006
“New York, New Work”, Agenzia 04, Bolognia, Italy
2005
Group Show, Audio Engine, NYC
“Inside/Out”, The Garage, Jersey city, NJ
#3, Champion Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA
“Dead Kids do Nothing”, 31 Grand, Brooklyn, NY
2004
The Studio, David Allen Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Art & Community VI: The Color Project, Esther M. Klien Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2003
“KAWAII / tête á tête - Twins Series”,PUSH, NYC
2002
“KAWAII / tête á tête”, Move Lab, NYC
1999
“Size Matters”, Gail Gates fine art, Dumbo NY
“A Room With a View”, Sixth @ Prince Fine Art, NYC
1998
“KAWAII / tête á tête” – XMAS Messages”, Showroom Gallery, Santa Fe
NM “WAIT STATION”, Showroom Gallery at The Art Exchange, NYC
1995
“Smells Like Vinyl” at Roger Merian Gallery, NYC
PERFORMANCES
2009
Maxi Geil & Playcolt, Fuze Box Festival, Austin TX
2008
Maxi Geil & Playcolt, After Hours, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC
2007
Maxi Geil & Playcolt (Screening of Nausea II and performances), Bloomberg Space, London
Maxi Geil & Playcolt, South London Gallery,, London
2005
Maxi Geil! & Playcolt, Performa05, Bowery Ballroom, NYC
Maxi Geil! & Playcolt (Screening of Nausea II and performances), Sketch, London
2004
Maxi Geil! & Playcolt (Screening of Nausea II and performances), Museum of Modern Art, NYC
2003/2004
Maxi Geil! & Playcolt, LIVE!, presented by Roebling Hall for the New York Armory Show
Brooklyn, NY
2002
Maxi Geil! & Playcolt “Edition Deluxe”, 3 night, multi media performance presented by Roebling Hall Gallery, NYC
1996-2001
The Infant Reader, member of a three person performance installation group that creates environments combining sound, light, and mixed visual effects.
2001
“Sound Lab” group performance to accompany CD release on Beggars Banquet SULFUR/SULPHER label, NYC
1997
Earl McGrath Gallery, NYC
Fringe Festival, Philadelphia, PA
1996
“The Shape of Sound”, Exit Art, NYC
The Art Exchange, NYC
407 Gallery, NYC
PUBLICATIONS
2007
Mcquaid, Cate, At play in the halls of power, Boston Globe, September 20 2007
Goodbody, Bridget L., Art in Review, The New York Times, June 29 2007
Armetta, Amoreen, Review, Three for Society, Time Out, New York, July 5 –July 11 2007
2006
Paderni, Marinella, New York, New York, Tema Celeste, March 2006
2005
Purves, Bullock, House Party, ELLE, December 2005
Wolf, Matt, Summer Group Shows Roundup, Flash Art, October 2005
Johnson, Last Chance Review, The New York Times, Friday July 29 2005
Cohen, Gallery - Going, The New York Sun, July 14, 2005
2002
Dergan,Hogan, Cash and Carry Art, SMOCK, Vol.2 #1 winter 2002
2001
Fenton, Music, WIRED 9, April 2001
EDUCATION
1987-1991
BFA Honors in Apparel Design, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
1991
Ravensbourne College of Design, Chiselhurst, England
press
SELECTED PRESS
Download a PDF of all Press -- (2 MB)
