Rachel Harrison is an American visual artist who is primarily known for her assemblage work and sculpture, but she has also engaged in performance art and drawing, and photography. Her work often incorporates elements of photography and found objects, sometimes layering abstract forms with industrially manufactured elements. She lives and works in New York.
Early life
Harrison was born in 1966 in New York. Harrison's mother was born in New Jersey and her father was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were both of Polish and Russian Jewish descent. In 1989 she attained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art from Wesleyan University, where she was strongly influenced by two teachers, sculptor Jeffrey Schiff and composer Alvin Lucier.
Career
In 1996 Harrison had her first exhibition, entitled Should home windows or shutters be required to withstand a direct hit from an eight-foot-long two-by-four shot from a cannon at 34 miles an hour, without creating a hole big enough to let through a three-inch sphere?, at the Arena Gallery in New York City founded by Art curator and dealer Renee Riccardo who said in an interview "No one at the time knew what to make of Harrison’s unusual work but many major critics including Roberta Smith of the New York Times felt compelled to write about". In this show, Harrison established her predilection for producing sculptures that juxtapose a unique combination of found, purchased, and received items. The title of the show was appropriated from a photo in The New York Times about housing improvement following the hurricane Andrew. Since then, her works have been fabricated using a wide range of materials, such as honey, cans of peas, papier-mâché, and trash bags. By using everyday goods and objects, Harrison frequently takes on the subject of consumer culture. In an interview, she writes "I want people to be real with art, to be conscious and present with the object in order to experience it." She also often confronts popular culture and celebrity with her work. For instance, in her 2012 exhibition The Help, her pieces featured the singer Amy Winehouse and the artist Martin Kippenberger. In 2013, Harrison received her first public art commission for the sculpture Moore to the Point in the Dallas City Hall Plaza, part of the Nasher Sculpture Center's Nasher XChange exhibition. This piece points to and frames Henry Moore's sculpture, Three Forms Vertebrae near Dallas City Hall. The work calls attention to how people interact with works of public art. In October 2019 Harrison is having a show, entitled, Life Hack at The Whitney Museum of Art.
Should home windows or shutters be required to withstand a direct hit from an eight-foot-long two-by-four shot from a cannon at 34 miles an hour, without creating a hole big enough to let through a three-inch sphere?, Arena Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
