Rachel Rickert & Alexandra Smith: Cold Shower

April 9th - May 7th, 2022

Auxier Kline is pleased to present the two-person exhibition Rachel Rickert & Alexandra Smith: Cold Shower. The exhibition features a series of recent paintings created by both Brooklyn-based artists, exploring the multifaceted attributes of romance, vulnerability, anxiety, loneliness, and desire as they relate to the larger theme of Intimacy. While maintaining their distinctive painting styles and approaches, these two women have created figurative depictions of their own bodies and those of their loved ones across various domestic tableaus, inspired by moments of significance and mined from their personal histories. While these paintings individually represent distinct memories for each artist, their culmination creates a dialogue about Intimacy that strikes on universal motifs. Illustrating this interconnectedness, both artists, unbeknownst to one another, created paintings of their respective partners bathing and titled them, Cold Shower, inspiring the title for the exhibition as a whole.

"Through memory and photographic references, I highlight moments of touch and desire which frequently go ignored. I want to slow time and refocus the attention on these romantic instances. In the painting Cold Shower, the light through a shower curtain envelops my partner's hand and torso. Within this piece, his hand wrapped around his back and resting on his arm is an encapsulation of idyllic reveries. This painting operates as a love letter to him as much as a general love letter to intimacy." - Alexandra Smith

“My self-portraits and portraits of my husband explore anxiety, vulnerability, and intimacy. The figuration is informed from direct experience and art historical references. I am particularly interested in moments of self-contemplation. The most private spaces within the refuge of the home, the shower and the bed, offer moments that run parallel to active living, but do not intersect it. I paint scenes of this type of tangential experience, as we recede, and live in our heads, and physical spaces become psychological ones.” - Rachel Rickert

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