BRIAN RATTINER: AND I, THE ANTS

BRIAN RATTINER: AND I, THE ANTS

ONLINE SOLO FEATURE OF WORKS ON PAPER

12.13.22 - 01.07.23

Did you get any pictures of the sky

A couple

Why does it look like

The stars are moving

And not the trees

Creak creak creak creak

Chopin came to Mallorca when he was sick

– excerpt of a poem, Galilea, Mallorca, 2022 *

CARVALHO PARK is pleased to present, And I, The Ants, an online solo feature of nineteen works on paper by New York artist Brian Rattiner. Each drawing, tinted with nostalgia and infused with the lyrical scribbles for which Rattiner is best known, coalesces here as a travel diary, with works of a four-year period, from Mallorca, Almería, and Skopelos, but also from the artist’s Brooklyn studio.

There is a weightlessness in these works, perhaps from the absence of knowing and the openness to absorb the light, terrain, sounds and sensations of new surroundings. Such unfamiliarity allows an unbinding of imagination, when expectation, reason and control are resigned, in favor of experience. This state of being is echoed in each work. In Dreams of Mallorca (2022), clouds of pigment form a kind of suspended scrim upon which palimpsests of graphite, color pencil, pastel, charcoal, and oil pastel unfurl and flow. Resembling forms but remaining undeniably open-ended, these marks elude the identifiable in order to become signifiers, releasing sensory associations of the landscape. The spirit or energy that emanates from a time and place radiates through these works in Rattiner’s proliferation of synthesist gestures.

Some works act as elaborate postcards, tilting towards narrative – the assimilation of oneself and the inhabitants of the Spanish terrain in Almería 1 (And I, The Ants) (2018), or experiencing the vastness of two worlds simultaneously, the above mirrored by the below, in Four Swims (2022). In others works, as in Jazz Gray (2022), one feeling rolls out across the sheet in perpetual rhythms, softened by a rare cohesive palette.

When taking a macro view of the artist’s practice, his travels – and the potent production that those explorations yield – become seminal moments that define entire bodies of work. Singular rather than supporting in their role, the drawings hold the intimacy and immediacy that only works on paper can offer a viewer – the artist’s range of materials is its most forthright in use, and tactile and tangible in experience.

* excerpt of a poem, composed from a recorded dialogue between the artist and Molly Kirwan, Galilea, Mallorca, August 2022

Brian Rattiner (b. 1982, Brooklyn, New York) received his BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). His work has been shown in solo and two-person exhibitions at Carvalho Park, New York, and David B. Smith gallery in Denver. Group shows include those at Ortega y Gasset Projects, Subtitled, and Transmitter Gallery in Brooklyn, Susan Eley Fine Art in New York, and the Leroy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University. International exhibitions include Le Coeur project space in Paris and the Anna Nova Gallery and Triumph Gallery in Moscow. Rattiner’s work has been selected for multiple juried exhibitions curated by Kate Mothes, founder of the influential platform Young Space, with guest curator David B. Smith. He has conducted residencies with Anderson Ranch, Colorado; Obracadobra, Oaxaca, Mexico; Monson Arts, Monson, Maine; Skopelos Foundation for the Arts in Greece; the Fundación Valparaiso in Mojácar, Spain; with curator Laure Le Baron in Collongues, France; and Alone in the Woods in Lincolnville, Maine. Rattiner lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.