1301PE is pleased to announce Blake Rayne’s fourth exhibition with the gallery: a presentation of new paintings that evolve Rayne’s interest in reflexive material procedures in concert with modes of abstraction.
Quite simply, what is essential is neither the image nor the deep meaning, neither the representation nor its hall of mirrored reflections, but the system of relations. – Michel Serres, The Parasite
Over the last 20 years, Blake Rayne’s work has been central to questioning, expanding, and perforating contemporary beliefs regarding painting. This new body of work continues this engagement by alternatively revealing and obfuscating its stages of production. The surfaces of Rayne’s paintings are aggregates of various marks and materials. Gestural abstraction, color gradients, prepared and unprepared fabrics are sewn and spliced together in an assemblage of objects bearing contradictory relations to classification. In this way, Rayne’s Spit Tests and Reverse Strikes revel in their mark–making while critically examining the tense situation of painting.
Blake Rayne (b. 1969, Lewes, Delaware) lives and works in New York. He attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), received a fellowship from the American Acadamy in Berlin (2010), and has taught at Columbia University’s School of Visual Arts. Cabin of the Accused, Rayne’s first survey exhibition, was presented at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, Texas. Solo exhibitions include Dog Ears, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, 2021;Yogurt Cinema, A Certain Lack of Coherence, Porto, 2019; Brother Ass, Central Fine, Miami, 2019; DOGSKULLDOGS, Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, 2018, and Carbon Days, Nuno Centeno, Porto, 2018; among others. His work was included inCollected by Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2016; Chat Jet: Painting <Beyond> the Medium Medium, Künstlerhaus, Graz, 2013, and group shows at Bergen Kunsthall, The Kitchen, SculptureCenter, Artists Space, Gladstone Gallery, Gagosian Gallery, Reena Spaulings, Greene Naftali, and American Fine Arts.
Rayne’s paintings are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, FRAC Poitou-Charentes, the Pinault Collection, Portland Museum of Art, and Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.
