Celeste Rapone in Aspen group exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery

July 27, 2023

EXHIBITION | Aspen, CO | In a selection of new works, Chicago-based painter Celeste Rapone (b. 1985; New Jersey) imbues uncannily flattened scenes with autobiographical details, art historical references, and artifacts of daily life, surrounding female subjects with detailed depictions of pizza boxes and used mayonnaise packets, ripped plastic cups and glasses of red wine, hair clips and single shoes. Rapone's figures contort impossibly within their spaces, their limbs pushing against the frame as the artist tests the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. For the Aspen presentation, Rapone has made four site-responsive paintings, drawing motifs from imagined summer retreats to mountain resorts. In bright-almost garish-summer colors, the artist depicts women napping in fields of wildflowers, lounging in front of magnificent mountain views, hunting for truffles, and searching for treasure with metal detectors. In their pursuit of leisure, Rapone's figures are pushed to the foreground, threatening to spill out toward the viewer. But there is a darker undercurrent to these paintings as well-Rapone's layers dark, muted colors over the brightness, implying that all is not as it appears on the surface.

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Marianne Boesky Gallery | Aspen Part II
July 26–September 4, 2023