Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of paintings by Chicago-based artist Rebecca Shore. Culled from several years of work, this presentation of intimate compositions highlights Shore’s decades-long interest in the invention of forms whose existence is at the same time convincing and imagined.
A graduate of the School of the Art Institute in the early 80’s where she studied with Chicago Imagists including Phil Hanson, Ray Yoshida, Christina Ramberg, and Karl Wirsum, Shore was encouraged to cast a wide net in order to develop a rich personal iconography. To that end, she has looked to art historical painting, signage, fashion, architecture, stonework, hair styles, cartoons, stringed instruments, and gravestones, among numerous other things. Her dense files of imagery – primarily photographs she has taken over the years— are the building blocks of her paintings.
In addition to being a painter, Shore made quilts for many years which gave her the opportunity to delve deeply into pattern. When she determined that the imagery she was most interested in depicting was more conducive to painting, she switched mediums, but has recently returned to quilt making as a concurrent practice. Clearly pattern, and symmetry with its suggestion of the human body or face, are focal points in her paintings. At first glance, the bright graphic imagery appears both flat and perfectly symmetrical. The objects she depicts each have their own material properties, whether a cord under tension, a flowing curtain or ribbon, a stiff chain, or a rigid structure. Yet with further scrutiny one sees symmetry being violated, patterns subtly breaking down, and shaded gravity-defying forms existing in shallow 3-D spaces.
Rebecca Shore (b.1956) lives and works in Chicago. Her solo show Green Light was at Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey in 2021, and she was also recently featured in group exhibitions at Luhring Augustine and David Nolan Gallery, New York. Shore is included in Private Eye: The Imagist Impulse in Chicago Art at Newfields, Indianapolis and participated in Touch and Go: Ray Yoshida and his Spheres of Influence at The School of the Art Institute, Chicago.