Rachel Abrams: frustrules 

June 7 - July 25, 2013

Rachel Abrams’ studio practice of experimentation combines material studies with research focused on science and language.  To varying degrees, her drawings and sculptural installations reference biology, while also exploring concepts like entropy, ritual, layering, memory, and relationships between the microscopic and the macroscopic.

In frustrules, Abrams repurposes discarded foam and metal to create a complete environment of spiny creature-like forms.  The work becomes part of the space, transforming it into what could be the ghost of a marine reef.  Frustrules are the silica cellular remnants of phytoplankton found in deserts that were once thriving aquatic environments.  These hauntingly beautiful accumulations of life ask the viewer to imagine what the space had been as an underwater ecosystem and to consider the constant state of change within the natural world.   Abrams asks, “If we continue to postpone our response to climate change, will these markers of environmental shift be the future of our current marine and freshwater ecosystems?”

About the Artist: Based in New York, Rachel Abrams earned her BFA in studio art from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1997 and an MFA in glass from Alfred University in 2000.  She has shown extensively throughout the United States since 1995, including at Artists Space, New York, the Museum of Luminous Phenomenon, Alfred, NY, the Sonoma Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Rosa, CA, the Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL, and the Louise Jones Brown Gallery at Duke University, Durham, NC.  Abrams has also been awarded residencies in Vermont, Assilah, Morocco and Paris, France. 

Exhibition Gallery