A Sleep and a Forgetting | Rachel Collier

This will be Rachel’s second full-building solo show in the Minneapolis storefront and thirteenth show with HAIR+NAILS including shows in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Rochester MN. Since their first show together in 2018 (“RELIEF: Three Fresh Approaches to Building Surface//Rachel Collier, Kim Benson, Sheila Wagner”) Collier’s brilliant sense of color and composition have been deployed with a wild variety of materials. In the last several years, her focus has been on tufted and felted dyed wool applied to canvas like and alongside paint. A Sleep and a Forgetting is a sharing of the exquisite technique and sensitivity Rachel has developed with these materials and a deep dialogue she has between the internal landscapes of her heart and intellect with non-representational image making. These new paintings vibrate with radiant colors, smooth ombres and sharp transitions, with textures ranging from waxy to wooly. Her wiggling and slicing forms harmoniously snuggle and defiantly bust through borders of frames within frames.

In the artist’s words:

“I understand the grid as an artist’s tool for design and structural support but also, more urgently, as a net cast into deep space, expanding and contracting presence and meaning, slicing through the atmosphere to become a two-dimensional framework that cradles the energy flowing through it. Through this lens, the grid becomes a place for magical thinking, beyond any sense of a fixed reality. Emotions and obstacles can be as powerful as deep space is infinite, and through their perspectival vantages, abstractions emerge. The grid measures my artistic impulse to describe explosive psychic landscapes while providing containment and constructing peaceful resolution, creating a tension which I endeavor to emphasize visually through color relationships, scale and material. These formal elements embody perseverance, and their rendering is delivered in the spirit of celebration.”

— Rachel Collier

About the Artist:
Rachel Collier (b. 1981) is an artist born and based in Minneapolis. Collier's work is rendered in  expansive color, transcribing ecstatic realms that populate our shared consciousness. Repeated  abstract forms anchor familiar psychic landscapes to our physical world, stirring the spirit in  preparation for advancement or departure. While referencing the languages of maps and  topography, her compositions deconstruct from the grid to imagine transcendent space. Collier has her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and recent exhibitions and  publications include HAIR+NAILS Gallery (Minneapolis, MN), Felix Fair (LA, CA), NADA Miami  (Miami, FL), Intersect Fair (Aspen, CO), the Nemeth Art Center (Park Rapids, MN), I Love You Too  (Portland, OR), TOA Presents (Cody, Wyoming), Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation (Ojai,CA),  Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN), Saint Kate’s Arts Hotel (Milwaukee, WI), New American  Paintings, MN Artists. Residencies: The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY (2021, 2022); Anderson  Center Jerome Emerging Artist Residency and Fellowship, Red Wing, MN (2022); Nido invitational  residency and exhibition, Monte Castello di Vibio, Umbria, Italy (2022); Anderson Ranch Arts  Center, Snowmass Village, CO (2022); Roswell Artist-in-Residence (alternate), Roswell, NM (2024- 2025.) 
www.rachelcollier.com 
Instagram: @rachelcolliermwa

Open Gallery Hours:
Walk-ins welcome: Thursdays/Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays 1:00- 5:00 starting March 22 through April 20. Also, appointments can be scheduled via  hairandnailsart@gmail.com.

Image: RACHEL COLLIER A Sleep and a Forgetting (2025) wool on canvas. 80”x 120”