Rita MacDonald

Sunroom Project Space 2010: Rita MacDonald
Sunroom | May 22 – June 27, 2010

Wave Hill announces Duplex, by Rita MacDonald, the first exhibition of five in the 2010 Sunroom Project Space. As part of Wave Hill’s Workspace Program, MacDonald has been working on site during the month of March. For this work, she has created an elaborate wall painting which utilizes patterning, repetition and optical illusion to move the viewer’s eye about the room. Starting with two patterns, a two-tone, green ivy motif and a graphic image of white birds, MacDonald made large stencils through which she applied paint and plaster directly onto the room’s walls. The image begins as a flat pattern, mimicking wallpaper, then contorts through space as it spreads over the wall, seeming to bend and move against the wall’s flatness.

By manipulating the scale and dimension of a pattern, MacDonald alters the painting’s perspective, disorienting the viewer. In doing so, she heightens the visual experience of the space, accentuating the room’s distinct architecture and calling attention to the dramatic views visible beyond its four large windows. The vines and birds, depicted in a deliberately stylized way, offer a striking contrast to the natural landscape. MacDonald is also interested in the role that decorative patterns play in a memory, pointing to the emotional resonance that the recollection of an ordinary element of domestic material, such as the design on a sheet of wallpaper, can hold. Here, these many layers of meaning converge to create a subtly unsettling and quietly powerful intervention in the room.

Rita MacDonald has shown her work most recently in a two-person exhibition at Hendershot Gallery, New York, NY, and in solo exhibitions at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, and The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN. She has also participated in several recent group exhibitions, including The Grand, at Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY at Old Westbury, NY; Quietly, at Luxe Gallery, New York, NY, Serial Meditations, Nurture Art, Brooklyn, NY; Pillowtalk, Ruth Bochofner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Public Halls Program, at 3rd Ward, Brooklyn, NY; and Projects 05, at The Carriage House at the Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY. She was recently awarded a commission from The Arts for Transit Program of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City to create two permanent mosaic works for Ave J and Ave M Stations on the Brighton Line in Brooklyn, that are scheduled to be installed later this year. MacDonald received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY (2001), and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (1991).

Duplex (study), 2010
Paint and plaster on wall
17’ x 17’
Courtesy of the artist

Duplex (study), 2010
Paint and plaster on wall
17’ x 17’
Courtesy of the artist