The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum presents Rachel Perry Welty 24/7 an exhibition on view Jan 29, 2011 – Apr 24, 2011.
Rachel Perry Welty has been creating obsessive, repetitive, and process-based works about aspects of her own life for over a decade. 24/7 is her first large-scale solo museum show and features Welty’s major works in drawing, sculpture, collage, installation, video, photography, and social media–some of which has been created especially for this exhibition.
As a conceptual artist, Welty utilizes whatever methods or materials best communicate the concept or idea for the artwork. Her disparate practices are unified by an interest in investigating language and systems as well as a visual aesthetic that combines the spare, precision of Minimalism with the vivid color and irony of Pop Art. Welty’s beautifully crafted work addresses a wide variety of issues including consumerism, suburbia, narcissism, information overload, language, the fleeting nature of experience, the passage of time, humor, and ultimately, life and death.
Welty takes daily life as her subject, incorporating the mundane and the extraordinary in equal measure. She appropriates the material that annoyingly, and sometimes mistakenly, inundates our lives as her subject, including spam emails, wrong number voice messages, receipts, twist ties, fruit stickers, Facebook updates, and even Muzak. The disposable minutiae of life is collected, organized, and transformed in poignant and visually surprising ways that uncover the poetic in the everyday. Whether painstakingly coding and copying her son’s hospital receipts and records, creating brightly colored wallpaper from fruit stickers, or meticulously reporting her every action on Facebook, Welty’s surprising transformations continually comment on and record what Welty calls, “the business of living.”
Rachel Perry Welty lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts and New York, New York. She is a graduate of the Fifth Year Certificate program of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and participated in the Traveling Scholar’s exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in both 2002 and 2006. In 2006 she was also a finalist for the Foster Prize competition at the Institute of Contemporary Art. She is represented by Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston, Gallery Joe in Philadelphia, and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York.
Major funding provided by James and Audrey Foster, The Goldhirsh Foundation, a grant from the Artists’ Resource Trust, Katherine Kirk and Malcolm Gefter, Barbara and Jonathan Lee, and an anonymous donor. Additional support provided by AT&T and John and Deborah French.
Image: Rachel Perry Welty Lost in my Life (twist ties), 2009 Pigmented ink print, edition of 3 90 x 60 inches Courtesy of the Artist, Barbara Krakow Gallery (Boston), Gallery Joe (Philadelphia), and Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York)
deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
51 Sandy Pond Road
Lincoln, MA 01773
www.decordova.org