Rebecca Morgan
Asya Geisberg Gallery is proud to present “Painting in the Apocalypse,” an exhibition of paintings by Rebecca Morgan. In her sixth show with the gallery, Morgan asks how to present images in the face of a raging political landscape. She engages potent themes from all her eras: sympathy for her rural background, feminist reappraisal of art history, and an unbridled excitement at infusing humor and technical prowess into her unabashed critique. Here she sharpens the political content by making it more specific and savage. Haunting images, circling obsessively in Morgan’s mind’s-eye, find their way to fruition in a variety of painterly languages.
Morgan’s strategic reimagining of art history suggests a possible coping mechanism. The titular artwork, “Painting in the Apocalypse,” inspired by Norman Rockwell’s “Triple Self-Portrait,” adds to prior Morgan themes of paintings within a painting. Here, instead of looking into a mirror as in Rockwell’s portrait, the artist stares back at us from a miasma of fiery orange brushwork, in horror, as if to say - are you seeing what I’m seeing? How can I make art at a time like this?
The emotional turmoil made physical in “Lights Out (After Guston),” or the murky reds of “Two White Demons Screaming at Each Other” further the darker tone of the show. Opposing visions of heaven and hell swap the Odalisque with a male body: in “When It Happens” a double rainbow forms and a happy crab climbs atop a grotesque bloated body. In “Andy After Sylvia Sleigh,” the artist’s partner is rendered naturalistically in an updated homage to Sleigh’s male nudes: ensconced in the pastoral, “Andy” suggests a desire to retreat into domestic idyll.
A more brutal vision is depicted in “Hunter Gatherer in the Apocalypse.” A grey-haired topless crone casually puffs out smoke, holding a pike that pierces through a man with the whisper of a red ball cap. A survivalist or a matriarchal revolutionary, the character could well be the artist’s future self. “Sorry I’ve Been Supine” is a quasi-apology for retreating from social media; portraying paralysis after prolonged exposure to the heightened volume of current events.
Smaller works in the exhibition embrace a wider range of styles: from the lush landscape of “Ivanna’s Grave” reputedly in a golf course, the goofily specific “Trad Wife”-influencer with her legions of children and egg-holding apron, to the portrait of “Druski as Erica Kirk,” a podcaster in whiteface and drag - itself a sort of painting style.
In “Painting in the Apocalypse,” Morgan’s exploration of painting leads the way through the mire: the gnarly yet luscious feet melting into the sand, the loving legs of her partner, the sfumato flames of the apocalypse, or cross-hatched tubular eyes reflecting the magnetic glow of the phone screen. Morgan presents no one answer to the premise of the exhibition, only an energized push forward. We can’t go on, we must go on, to paraphrase Samuel Beckett’s refrain.
