Visions of a Future Dream: Rachel Garrard

Visions of a Future Dream is Rachel Garrard’s first solo show in Aspen with Hexton Gallery. The exhibition presents a collection of new paintings, integrated with a site-specific sculpture. 

Garrard’s multifaceted practice articulates a view of reality in which the border between the physical and ephemeral is porous and ever-shifting. Through subtle abstractions she charts energetic and psychic states and their impact on and interaction with the physical plane. Referencing philosophical, scientific and cultural theory with her own deep psychogenic exploration, she has developed a symbolic language and sacred geometry that intimately connects the internal with the cosmic and universal. 

The paintings reveal inner structures of the external world: rocks, personally collected by the artist, are hand-ground and applied to raw linen canvas through a process of fine layering to create translucent washes of colour. The canvas becomes a physical register of place, a palimpsest of past experiences and a portal to the metaphysical landscape of memory. 

Rachel Garrard’s (b.1984) paintings move between the liminal space of the physical and the esoteric worlds. Her multi-disciplinary practice encompasses painting, sculpture, video, performance, installation, and holographic projection. Garrard incorporates natural elements in her works through pigments and earth materials, establishing a relational dynamic with her natural surroundings. 

Garrard’s journey begins with the land. The Earth and its physical elements form the underlying base of her work, whereby the artist creates her pigments ground from the land she revers. These handmade hues are then transferred to canvas in subtle shapes and iconography that both honor the origin of the material while illuminating the spiritual aura found in one’s connection to the natural world. Tapping into a spiritual, mental space, Garrard activates these narratives through meditative states that reveal a visual language rooted in the metaphysical.

Garrard gained a BFA and MFA at Central Saint Martins, London. She has been awarded artist residencies at Casa Wabi, Oaxaca (2022), Andratx, Mallorca (2022), the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, CT (2018) Yaddo, NY (2018) and Millay Colony, NY (2018), the Center for the Holographic Arts at Ohio State University (2012) and the Atacama Telescope Farm in Chile (2011). Her work has been exhibited at the Hammond Museum, NY (2019), Kraftwerk, Berlin (2017), Pioneer Works, NY (2016), the National Academy Museum, NY (2015), Métropole Musée d’Art Moderne, France (2015), Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2014), Eyebeam Art and Technology Center (2012), Participant Inc. (2010), Yota Space Digital Arts Festival, St Petersburg (2010), and ICA, London (2009).