Meg Lipke’s paintings and soft sculptures play with surface and support. Flat or in low relief, they reference the body, hint at the comfort of a favorite shirt or a well-worn moment that you can’t let go of. Their soft shabbiness suggests an otherworldly mess or a mundane Veronica’s veil - in the commercial the stain is not only removed but transfigured. The happenstance of daily life comes off the countertop and onto the canvas.
Schmidhofer, on the other hand, paints the poetics of an empty room. They convey the arrested time of housesitting for an absent friend, the domestic museum of someone else’s everyday life. A ticking clock, the bubbling filter on the fish tank are atmospheric conditions as much as the light is. Like seeing the same “your” brand of toothpaste in someone else’s bathroom, they short circuit vision and memory.
Meg Lipke’s first solo exhibition at the gallery was in 2015. She has had numerous other solo and group exhibitions, including a solo show at Freight and Volume, New York. She has received an MFA from Cornell University and BA from the University of Vermont. She lives and works in Ghent, New York.
Rachel Schmidhofer’s first solo exhibition was at the gallery in 2016. She had a solo exhibition at Novella Gallery, New York and her work has been included in group exhibitions at Kent Fine Art and Zurcher Gallery, New York and Gallery Poulsen, Copenhagen. She received an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from Washington University. In 2014, with Jennifer Coates, she co-curated Tossed, the gallery’s first group exhibition in Hudson. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
