Hot Shots : Rachel Sussman
Artist Statement
My work is an interpretation of the slow push and pull between man and nature happening quietly around us all the time. Its issues are like that of any other relationship really: navigating the other, testing and crossing boundaries, finding a reasonable balance or eventually giving up. I'm drawn to manmade patterns that use nature as a medium or inspiration,and conversely to natural patterns returning manmade materials to a more natural state. I employ formal devices such as restricted color palates, flattening/filling the picture plane, and considered use of line and shape to further the dialog between aesthetics, content, and form. What results in the work is my own unique system, culled from as much of the world as I can manage to get to. An additional, less legible layer of subtext is an illustration of my thoughts about the nature of photography: capturing the contradiction of presenting the inevitable (arti)facts of a mechanical medium that by nature can only ever be part of the picture. I have found Mike Davis' quote‚ "But that isn't real the way the real things are real" a touchstone for my work, with the notion of the unveiling of extant Truth as a counterpoint.
Biography
Rachel Sussman, b. 1975, grew up in Baltimore, punctuated by stints in Santa Fe and Nicoya, Costa Rica. She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1998 and has been awarded artist's residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Cooper Union, and Vermont Studio Center. She is currently a member of the Macdowell Fellows Executive Committee and was named Evelyn Stefansson Nef Fellow in 2005. In 2007 She served as Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Artist at Rollins College.
Over the past 10 years Sussman has exhibited in the US and Europe. New York venues include the Museum of Natural History, Jen Bekman Gallery, Christie's, New Century Artists, Pierogi, Momenta, Artists Space, Cue Art Foundation and Galapagos Art Space. Her work has also been shown at the LA Design Center, University of Pennsylvania and Vox Populi in Philadelphia, Photography 2005 at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Stenersenmuseet in Norway, D21 Kunstraum, Pierogi Liepzig, as well as Artnews Projects and Galerie Engler & Piper, Berlin.
Additionally, Sussman is an Interactive Producer managing projects ranging for NBC.com's Homicide and Saturday Night Live sites to educational software employing speech recognition technologies. She also performed trapeze as part of the duo The Amazing Siblings in venues throughout New York, though her acrobatic career was cut short when she was sidelined by a rotator cuff injury.
Sussman's first solo Chelsea show takes place this May at Michael Steinberg where she will show work from her project The Oldest Living Things in the World.