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Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA
On the surface, the domains envisioned in Rebecca Chamberlain’s highly composed multi-panel works appear pristine, nearly sterile. In their unoccupied condition, there is a calm though somewhat disquieting atmosphere. With imagery of architecture from between the World Wars, Chamberlain refrains from inhabiting these scenes with human presence. Instead, she imbues the rooms with a sense of suspended time, much like the time-period, which she is directly referencing. Chamberlain views these choreographed spaces as stage-sets, pregnant with potential. She transposes these overly lit and blown out shots into saturated, mostly mono-chromatic vistas, further enhancing the sense of stopped time. Working from vintage photographs, printed documents, and her own experience of these contexts, Chamberlain pushes oily and iridescent lithography inks across the vintage architectural tracing paper, committing to a measured control, while allowing for the occasional expressive looseness that a vase of flowers, or texture of fabric would allow.
Rebecca Chamberlain, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, is known for her diverse accomplishments in fine art, fashion and performance. This body of work is ongoing and has been included in solo and group exhibitions 303 Gallery and Knoedler Project Space in New York, judi rotenberg gallery in Boston, Champion Fine Art in LA and Agenzio04 in Bologna, Italy, among others. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Flash Art and Tema Celeste among other publications.
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 Rebecca Chamberlain, Central Access Diptych Asmara 1938-39 after Rogier van der Weyden, 2009, litho ink on vintage tracing cloth, 71 x 36,5 inches |
