Saenger Gallery presents Afterimage, second individual exhibition in Mexico by the artist Rachel Hellmann. The exhibition articulates three bodies of work, strongly correlated with each other, where a series of fabric pieces hand-sewn on sheets of Dura-Lar and some paintings on paper and wood that were inspired by them dialogue, ranging from two-dimensional support to sculptural.

The works included in Afterimage allow the artist to continue investigating the perception of light from different viewing angles provided by the materials used and the process that each of these requires, such as the superimposition of the transparent Dura film. -Lar, the assembly of different textures through manual sewing or the wooden construction of frames with shape and relief inspired by the results obtained in pictorial collages. Regarding her creation process, Rachel has said: “I constructed the sewn works as if they were paintings but using fabric, colored papers and threads. Starting to work with pre-existing materials represented a different type of problem solving. I built in a way that responded to a conversation between folds, stitches and planes of color. Using a sewing machine, needle and thread, I built the works from the front surface and later created very superficial reliefs that make the work oscillate between sculpture and drawing.”

Textiles function similarly with their marriage of utility and meaning. In both paper and wood paintings and sewn works, the artist combines these worlds using simplified angular forms that evoke geometry and precision with the materiality of the domestic; In this whole set, the union of the hand and the machine is present, as well as the sentimental and the formal. The fabrics and textures they provide are also a gateway to memory and personal experience. Added to this, the nuances of color absorption and reflection make the work visual, tactile and experiential. The interaction of light on surfaces is the fundamental impulse in Rachel Hellmann's work, “the action of seeing, pausing and absorbing something non-verbally is what interests me most when creating art.”

The Afterimage exhibition is the most recent evidence of this desire, in which the experience is not only visual but posterior to the image, it is spatial, tactile and mnemonic, and arises from an ordered form that travels the limits between sculpture, painting and drawing.

Rachel Hellmann (Saint Louis, MO, 1977) Lives and works in Terre Haute, Indiana

Rachel Hellmann is a multidisciplinary artist known for her ongoing series of meticulously crafted geometric sculptures and paintings. Her works fuse the mediums of painting and challenge the movement of the heavy, solid wood medium with her carefully coordinated use of light, shadow and dimension. Working in both three dimensions and on paper, the resulting forms explore the way the viewer's perception is disoriented by the distorted sense of gravity caused by the careful interplay of geometry, light and color.

Rachel Hellmann studied her MFA at Boston University and her BFA at the University of Dayton. His work has been exhibited widely internationally, recent solo exhibitions include “Interweave” (Ellen Miller Gallery, Boston, 2024), “Color as an Enunciation” (iGallery, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 2023), “The Shape of Color” (Galleri Urbane, Dallas, 2022) and “Leaning Toward the Sun” (Rockwell Museum, Corning, NY, 2022). It has also been presented at the Centro Cultural Casal Son Tugores (Spain), Kirk Gallery (Denmark), Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA), University of Maine Museum of Art (Bangor, ME), Danforth Museum of Art (Framingham, MA) and the Elmhurst Museum of Art (Elmhurst, IL). She recently obtained artistic production residencies at the Kimmel Nelson Harding Center for the Arts (Nebraska), at the Miró Mallorca Foundation (Palma de Mallorca, Spain) and at the Corning Museum of Glass (New York); To these are added previous residencies at the Ragdale Foundation in Forest Park (Illinois), Platte Clove Preserve in Catskills (New York) and Playa in Summer Lake (Oregon). She has also received the Blanche E. Colman Prize for Painting, the Constantin Alajalov Prize from Boston University, and the Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission. His work is part of the collections of Ackerman Capital Management, Addison Gallery of American Art, Blackstone, Boston Federal Reserve Bank, Burke Rehabilitation Center, Cleary Gottlieb, Commerce Bank, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Independent Financial Bank, Morgan Stanley, New York Presbyterian Hospital , Rockwell Museum of Art, Boston US Department of State: Art in Embassies Program: Sri Lanka, William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, UT Southwestern Medical Center and Zillman Art Museum. Rachel has been a teacher and visiting artist at several universities, including MassArt in Boston, Dartmouth College, and the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Rachel Hellmann is represented exclusively for Mexico by Saenger Galería.

— Saenger Galería