Whitney Claflin, Rochelle Feinstein at Drei

There was a wierd solace in visiting Whitney Claflin and Rochelle Feinstein’s duo present on the Fourth of July. As the USA’ tragic devolution has ramped up in current weeks, it felt apt to spend the nation’s Independence Day amidst these New York-based artists enduring engagement—private and political, summary and hyper-specific—with dwelling in America. Feinstein stitched worming traces of hand-dyed, rainbow yarn into a bunch of drop material work that embody American Sampler / 2020 (all works 2022), by which she makes use of the threads to hint the contours of a puzzle of light-washed purple and blue state-like shapes. The stops and begins of colourful embroidery are garish and hopeful, like a last-ditch try and metaphorically heal the nation. Claflin’s Chore Chart renders a field of Jiffy model corn muffin combine in oil, ink, and pencil on canvas. This emblem of Americana is without delay monument and riddle, blurring traces between commemoration and critique.

Each artists’ works are primarily involved with portray, whether or not by muddling its materiality, as in Claflin’s The Worst TV I Have Ever Owned, or by confronting its weighty legacies with wonky grids, as in Feinstein’s Sequel. Claflin was Feinstein’s pupil simply over a decade in the past and adopted her trainer’s polyphonic method to artmaking. Each artists solid their internet broadly when it comes to what can compel and represent a piece. Right here, Feinstein confirmed a cell of laminated Polaroids alongside drooping drop material work that had been tacked to the wall, whereas Claflin’s wispy, scraggly line traversed a various group of small oil work, a disco ball sculpture, and an ink drawing of a waifish creature holding a placard declaring “neither behemoth.” There was a way that every one the mess that’s life, politics, and paint was up for grabs, jumbled right into a tenuous cohesion—not order or decision, however one thing like that means.

— Camila McHugh