The exhibition, hosted by Bollinger Projects, will showcase eight acrylic-on-linen paintings from the artist’s newest series plus 3 works on paper. The portraits of fabric being shown are part of Rothschild’s nerdy, hypnotic and exhaustive examination of ancient textile remains, a subject she first began to explore in 2002 in several drawings on paper and began painting on linen canvas in the summer of 2012.
The detail in the survey of these artifacts is a both a scientific exploration and an ode to the humble yet devastating beauty found in traditional female arts. The series celebrates oft-overlooked artifacts—the 3000-year-old Pharoah Tutankhamun’s head scarf and the cloth wrappers that guarded the Dead Sea Scrolls—as blockbusters in their own right. Rothschild’s intricate grid work deconstructs and remakes the ancient fabric and also pays homage to the long tradition of woven textiles even as it reinvents them. Her free-flowing strokes on linen canvas radiate a view on the magnificence and architecture inherent in these humble utilitarian pieces of fabric—and also document the textiles’ inevitable unraveling in the face of time.
Rothschild has created a total of 20 Portraits of Ancient Linen. Rothschild’s seventh work in the series, Temple Scroll Wrapper II, was acquired by the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut this past November as part of their permanent collection.
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WORKS shown include Loin Cloth of the Architect Kha III, Dead Sea Scroll Linen II, Fayum Neolithic Linen and the Head Cloth of Tutankhamun II & III as well as three framed works on paper.
EXHIBITION is at the Arbuckle House Sunday, June 15th, 3-6 PM
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By appointment from June 6th - June 21st.
ARTIST
GAIL ROTHSCHILD paints expansive cartographic interpretations of textiles, both ancient and contemporary. Her haunting portraits spotlight the spinning of fiber, the knitting of thread and the centuries-old skill of producing fabrics. The works on view reference the story of Penelope, Odysseus' cunning wife from Homer's Odyssey, challenging societal conceptions about the artistry dismissed in traditional female "crafts." Portraits of Ancient Linen marries Rothschild's recent focus on painting and brushstroke with an artistic sensibility of impermanence cultivated in the site-specific installations of early career.
BACKGROUND Gail Rothschild was born in New York City and raised in Connecticut. She graduated from Yale University with a BA (cum laude) in 1981. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA, PS1, DeCordova Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the University of New South Wales. Rothschild's work is also held in several public collections, including: the Mead Art Museum, the University of Memphis; and, most recently, the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut. Rothschild has also completed commissions for myriad public sculpture, set, and landscape design projects. He work is held in private collections in London, Dubai, New York, Connecticut, and San Francisco.
