Rachel Schechtman
August 5-28, 2016
Consumables
“Consumables” is a show about bodies. The forms represent people who have been touched by illness, cut up, and put back together. Schechtman plays with materials that are utilitarian and expendable in an effort to align and mismatch their physical nature to their meaning. In this show their inherent characteristics are used to highlight the all-consuming nature of illness and the burden that our future bodies put on our present selves.
Schechtman has created assemblages in an attempt to mimic the physical and psychological effects of disease. In her work, fluids host growth and crystallize; they are saturated, and spent. Tissue multiplies, bleeds together, and scabs into mass. Vessels are overtaken from the inside out, they are made fragile, and they obscure. They have control and lack of control exerting upon them simultaneously. Schechtman makes work akin to experiments. The materials are set within a loose framework and left to expand into their final form on their own.
Schechtman is striving to depict unease. For example the small capsules hidden behind the stretched skins illustrate the empty yet bubbling anxiety of illness lurking just beneath the surface. They are the moment just before a tumor is diagnosed malignant or benign.
Schechtman often engages with moments of morbid humor in her work. Embracing the gross and odd nature of the body is necessary to navigate and survive our own physicality.
Rachel Schechtman is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Washington, D.C. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from The George Washington University in 2012. Her mixed media assemblages, installations, and videos often touch upon issues tied to the body, health, and gender.
