Rachel Harrison20191020201

Peter SchjeldahlThe New Yorker

10256

David JoselitElisabeth Sussman

The work of the sculptor Rachel Harrison is both the zeitgeist and the least digestible in contemporary art. It may also be the most important, owing to an originality that breaks a prevalent spell in an art world of recycled genres, styles, and ideas.Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker

In her sculptures, room-sized installations, drawings, photographs, and artists books, Rachel Harrison (b. 1966) delves into themes of celebrity culture, pop psychology, history, and politics. This publication, created in close collaboration with the artist, explores twenty-five years of her practice and is the first comprehensive monograph on Harrison in nearly a decade. Its centerpiece is an in-depth plate section, which doubles as a chronology of Harrisons major works, series, and exhibitions. Objects are illustrated with multiple views and details, and accompanied by short texts. This thorough approach elucidates Harrisons complicated, eclectic oeuvrein which she integrates found materials with handmade sculptural elements, upends traditions of museum display, and injects quotidian objects with a sense of strangeness. Six accompanying essays cover Harrisons earliest works to her most recent output. The book also includes a handful of photo-collages that the artist created specifically for this project. Published here for the first time, these pieces superimpose found images with reproductions of Harrisons own past work.

David Joselit is distinguished professor in the Art History Department of the City University of New York Graduate Center. Elisabeth Sussman is Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.