Rachel Stern

Statement

To understand the function of beauty is to recognize it as a form of power. My work seeks to describe the complexity of that power. I create a limbo of unreserved opulence and overwhelming reality where most real things are fake and all fake things are real. I invite my audience to peer into the proscenium, encounter a facsimile wonderland, and begin to wittingly play along. The colliding roles of queerness, kitsch, history, and the dramatic banal, leave questions of authenticity always hanging in the balance. Somewhere between life’s latent dramas and its pervasive and bewildering exoticism, I find the chance to take some small control over my own experience of beauty. The works included in this exhibition focus on the power of adornment. Meditating on the mesmerizing beauty of Faberge’s design I stud objects of my own admiration with gems. It is the act of adorning something that makes it precious more so than the value of the materials used in the decoration. Here, my desire to honor my teacher Jeffry Gibson and my friend Zak's beautiful armpit does not falter or lessen for the gems plastic, adhesive qualities.