MACHTELD RULLENS

Organized in collaboration across both galleries as a cohesive exhibition, Beacon Road brings together new works that the artist made during residency at the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut this past summer, revealing her continued exploration of how discarded objects can be remade into forms of painterly expression. With works that straddle the line between painting and sculpture, Rullens has uncovered an aesthetic terrain entirely her own, one deeply informed by modernism while remaining committed to the expressive potential of contemporary material culture.

Rullens uses cardboard as her preferred substrate, upon which she applies successive layers of oil, acrylic and pigment, before applying a reflective finish with resin. She breaks down boxes, flattening and even reconstructing them anew, painting as she goes while discovering new arrangements of form with each step. More than simply repurposing them, Rullens transforms her boxes through an elaborate array of gestures—from folds to creases to stacking—each unified by particular color combinations and high gloss surfaces.

The works in Beacon Road signal the continued evolution of Rullens’ process of transforming ordinary objects into complex surfaces of painting. Whereas previous works typically retained an overtly sculptural quality, these new works often involve crushing and flattening boxes together to create layered structures that recede into themselves, alongside the use of gridded compositions that reflect the influence of Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square series. Rullens’ move towards creating flatter and flatter surfaces remains in constant tension with the three-dimensionality of her materials as they emerge from the picture plane and towards the viewer, with evidence of their construction—fastening, bolting, bending—always visible, a reminder of the labor underwriting their construction and which unsettles their abstract illusionism.

While in residence, Rullens drew inspiration from the landscape around her, where fields, trees and barns replaced the dense urban space of city life. Her experience of this landscape, in tandem with close study of the work of both Josef and Anni Albers, allowed her to further distill her process in search for pure form and essential color, creating works that function as ground, frame, glass and backing all at once.

Courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery.