Opia – Western Exhibitions

January 8, 2022 - March 5, 2022
Gallery One, Chicago

Installation view , Rachel Niffenegger: Opia, at Western Exhibitions, January 8 to March 5, 2022

The Other Side of a Mirror by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge aka “Anodos”

I sat before my glass one day,
And conjured up a vision bare,
Unlike the aspects glad and gay,
That erst were found reflected there –
The vision of a woman, wild
With more than womanly despair.Her hair stood back on either side
A face bereft of loveliness.
It had no envy now to hide
What once no man on earth could guess.
It formed the thorny aureole
Of hard, unsanctified distress.Her lips were open – not a sound
Came through the parted lines of red,
Whate’er it was, the hideous wound

In silence and secret bled.
No sigh relieved her speechless woe,
She had no voice to speak her dread.

And in her lurid eyes there shone
The dying flame of life’s desire,
Made mad because its hope was gone,
And kindled at the leaping fire
Of jealousy and fierce revenge,
And strength that could not change nor tire.

Shade of a shadow in the glass,
O set the crystal surface free!
Pass – as the fairer visions pass –
Nor ever more return, to be
The ghost of a distracted hour,

That heard me whisper: – ‘I am she!’

For her fourth solo exhibition with Western Exhibitions, Opia, Rachel Niffenegger braves familiar faces in curious and experimental new media. Specters the artist previously conjured through paint pours, are now generated through an obsessive digital breeding process, which combines artificial intelligence and sublimated aluminum. These wraiths are suspended amongst haunted furniture, pulled from the folds of psychedelic clay, and spiraled through mirrored metal work. A precarious steel and brass tête-à-tête chair and uncanny rug divides the gallery. The psychological seating presents a space to ponder our unbecoming, and observe the haunted underscores of ourselves and homes in the process. The show opens on Saturday, January 8 and will run through March 5, 2022. Appointments are not necessary; masks are mandatory; gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 11am to 6pm.

Rachel Niffenegger’s work has been included in museum shows at the Museum for Modern Art in Arnhem, the Netherlands; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI; and the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago and in gallery show in New York, Berlin, Chicago, Liverpool, Denver, and Milwaukee, among others. In 2012 she completed a 9-month residency at DE ATELIERS in Amsterdam. Chicago Magazine named her “Chicago’s best emerging artist” in 2010 and New City named her one of “Chicago’s Next Generation of Image Makers” in 2010, this after naming her the “Best Painter Under 25” in 2009. Niffenegger, born in Evanston in 1985, received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and lives and works in Chicago.

Visit the In Depth with Rachel Niffenegger page for a studio playlist, process images and insight, a narrated video walkthrough, and more about Niffenegger’s thoughts around Opia here.