ART CITIES:N.York-Rachel Lee Hovnanian
Born in West Virginia and raised in Houston, Rachel Lee Hovnanian draws on personal areas of her Southern upbringing, to juxtapose our current cultural values. Expanding on familiar themes in her previous work, Rachel Lee Hovnanian uses each exhibition in this series to initiate difficult conversations surrounding modern relationships with technology, addiction, and gender roles, through a collection of interactive installations, paintings, sculptures and works on paper.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Leila Heller Gallery Archive
Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s “The Women’s Trilogy Project” is three-part, six-month takeover of Leila Heller’s Gallery in New York, marks the first time in recent memory that a single artist will have three sequential exhibitions in a New York gallery. The project includes three thematically related installments that expand on the familiar themes explored in the artist’s previous body of work, which include addiction, gender roles and our relationship with technology. In the final part of “The Women’s Trilogy Project” entitled “Part III: Pure” the artist explores the social constructs of consumerism and societal pressures through interactive installations, as well as a series of original marble sculptures., is the final deliverance for this ambitious exhibition series. “Pure” was created in New York, Los Angeles and Italy and focuses in on the iconic ivory soap bar which represents mass consumption and our obsessions with “purity” in American culture. Like her previous exhibitions, Hovnanian invites the audience to activate the work and confront the battle between decade old social constructs. The first part of the trilogy, “(Ray Lee Project Vol. 1) NDD Immersion Room” (24/2-11/4/18), was a large-scale immersive installation whose title derives from the concept of Nature Deficit Disorder (“NDD”), used to describe a form of human alienation from nature that results in both a greater susceptibility to negative moods and a reduced attention span. Upon entering the exhibition, visitors surrendered their phones and received a lantern to enter a dimly lit interior forest barely illuminated by a campfire with very few signs of civilization. The artist created this exhibition under her male pseudonym, Ray Lee, assigned by her peers during adolescence to reflect her interest in stereotypically masculine outdoor past-time like camping and fishing. “As women possessions, gender roles and stereotypes drive us to actions and limitations that are artificial rather then real” said the artist. “Part II: Happy Hour” was a multi-media exhibition that exploreed domestic culture and gender roles in relationship to alcoholism through a series of paintings, works on paper and multi-media installations using the narrative style of Dick and Jane, and iconography borrowed from Girl Scout and debutante traditions. “Happy Hour” (20/4-31/5/18) was the most personal work shown in this series. This exhibition was a deep reflection of her adolescence growing up in the south which challenges the restrictions of her upbringing. Hovnanian uses her works in this series to show the complicated complicit relationship surrounding alcoholism and the domestic order.
Info: Leila Heller Gallery, 568 West 25th Street, New York, Duration: 7/6-21/7/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-16:00, www.leilahellergallery.com
