Fiona Rae

FIONA RAE

511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

FIONA RAE

515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

By Christina Rees

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

—Roy Batty, Bladerunner, 1982

It has been a hell of a couple of years, huh? Back in the middle of 2020, we were all talking about “The Great Reset.” Remember that? It feels like a thousand years ago. Since then the whole world has reset, indeed—just not the way we hoped it would. What is this place?

I know artists who have withdrawn in the face of this turmoil, who have changed everything about the way they work (if they work at all) since that ancient, desolate year: painters who gave up their studios, sculptors who compulsively redesign their patios, video artists who make thousands of finicky paper collages at their kitchen tables, photographers who stopped taking pictures and now only take baths.

Here’s what I know about Fiona Rae. She does not stop. She is only now hitting her prime, and yet she has already lived through too many eras, spent too many of her cat lives, to not put every ounce of her wisdom and sensibility into her paintings. That’s because her paintings talk. And there’s a lot to talk about these days.

Throughout her career, Rae has made paintings that are triumphs of abstraction, even as they manage to tell stories, to illustrate layered and complex truths about our world and our interior lives. Some of these truths, the first-impression ones, are purely physical: how paint strokes resolve, how pigments layer, how line and shape redefine the plane. There is no small amount of visual pleasure in this kind of material fact checking; it is one of the reasons paintings have maintained their

I’VE SEEN THINGS YOU PEOPLE WOULDN’T BELIEVE: FIONA RAE IN 2022

hold on us, decade after decade, century after century. Our eyes hunger for this kind of fluid, sensual play, the kind that Rae so generously offers. No other art form can deliver the artist’s mind-to-hand to the world the way paint on a surface does. Rae, in steering clear of explicitness, allows us to luxuriate in what the paint is doing, rather than getting bogged down in what it all means. Rae’s paint embodies the artist in the most phenomenological way. (Paintings that are this assured can stir resentment. “But what about other kinds of art?” we yell. “What about technology?”

We may even retaliate by declaring painting over every few years—and yet every single time we do, we realize that no art form feels as alive as painting.) There has never been a time when great painting has not been desirable: year in, year out. And Rae’s paintings deliver on painting’s great promise.

But the second kind of truth in her work, the one for which we even more specifically return to Rae, is in the lyricism of the relationships between her figures—and they are figures, however conceptual and speculative they may be. This is the storytelling, with the paint creating a tale told maybe sequentially, maybe comprehensively, and often both.

In 2022, her paintings do both. The newest ones are loquacious and illustrative. They feel the way the world feels right now on our better days, the days when we can believe that our long isolation and confusion has added up to a Great Reset that’s blooming with interconnectivity and promise. In Rae’s world, we are on the move; we are seeing patterns of renewal across our brains and our landscapes. We are going to keep reaching out, to keep trusting each other somehow. Moments of darkness punctuate her stories. (They must; this reset has come at a price.) But the mood is buoyant. Rae has seen things. While some of us are still reeling, she believes in a future. She gets up, and she leaves the house. She engages because she is engaged. The mind of a curious person cannot switch off.

In recent months, Rae has made cityscapes, signage, wormholes, and flora. In her stories, flat interweaving staccato forms give way to three dimensions of depth and eruption, and then playfully—in a gotcha! hat tip—level themselves back down to the surface. If you look at her paintings from one reasonable angle, as though you are positioned from above, you view the God’s-eye schematics of reawakening cities—

the roadways and park life glittering in the morning sun. From another angle, you are on the ground with her figures, looking out at them as they order and re-order themselves like wry and buzzing characters in an opening Stephen Sondheim number: We have a big day! We’re on our way! Oh, wait: Look at that bird! That sign! That tree! Her figures fly and swim across the surface and out of the picture; they return adorned in the newest plumage. While there were artists who shut down for portions of 2020 or 2021, Rae was out in the world and of the world—on the street, in the water, in the weather. She never stopped looking, and her paint never stopped talking. Thank God for that.

This shows the backbone of a veteran, and Rae’s veteran spine takes two forms: the kind the art world pays attention to and the kind the real world rewards.

About Rae’s place in the art world: It has been a pleasure to watch her from one decade to the next, because she does what only the canniest artists know to do and are actually able to do: She constantly evolves without losing her through line. Rae has tropes. This is important: A fan who wants a Rae painting wants a painting that looks as if Rae made it. Rae’s tropes are about discrete forms and their constant movement: Her lines, swoops, daubs, and rumbly coils of shape and suggestion are always on the move in her compositions, even when they are configured with military precision. (She doesn’t often restrict them this way, though; her forms are restless).

Often, they speak with one another, or over one another, even across a wide plane when some are on the far north side and others are on the south; they interrupt and finish one another’s thoughts. Often, they are moving in and out of verse or chorus, whether they are singing dirges, ballads, shout choruses, or lullabies. But the evolution of Rae’s work is unmistakable.

Her ever evolving body of work reveals the concerns and references of the moment in her life in which she creates them. When her figures first sprang to life— muscular Athenas from the head of Zeus—in the late 1980s, she was just finishing her university years at Goldsmiths, University of London. These abstract “figures” were nascent yet fully realized; the robust-yet-calligraphic assemblages took a grid formation. They had weight, but they danced. These earliest paintings debuted in the storied group exhibition Freeze, organized by Damien Hirst, which took place

in a Port Authority building in the London Docklands in 1988. Rae hasn’t slowed or stopped since then. She has sent her troops, drips, stems, petals, clouds, stars and swooshes on adventure after adventure, through dark celestial skies and playful anime metaverses; through smoky noir shadowlands, verdant gardens, and impossibly ethereal cloudscapes. When she’s feeling literal, her figures spell it out for you in the form of recognizable letters, animals, stars, and glyphs. When her feet leave the ground, she releases her figures as something nearly atmospheric—ghosts of her impulses. Sometimes she channels oppositional modes in a single painting. We contain multitudes, after all.

As for Rae’s real-world veteran muscle: You’ll find that it’s located in the aforementioned wisdom of keeping going no matter what. Rae senses the dark maw of our capitalistic, transactional world, and she understands its demands. Our world is getting weirder and more contradictory by the year. It slows for no one. If you want to survive—to thrive—you must keep operating, keep breathing. You must get back in the studio and keep painting. Rae never demands more of this world than she demands of herself, which is to say that the world is hungry, but her appetite outruns it. Her intellectual curiosity is layered over a work ethic that carries her from one exhibition to the next, from one body of work—each with its own attendant emotional highs and lows—to the next. Onward and upward.

Given how defeated so many artists feel these days, in the face of what they may describe as the dissolution of an epoch, there is something in how Rae sees this age that offers us hope. She has seen a lot. She has seen too much. But instead of giving in to the self-inflicted stigmata of paralysis and despair, Rae takes her vision with her into the next era, the next dimension, the next body of work. On her good days, you can sense the breadth of her rich history of making paintings. On her best days, you sense that, really, she’s just getting started.

Christina Rees is a longtime culture critic based in Texas.

Hello darkness, my old friend, 2021

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

My soul into the boughs does glide, 2021

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

12

There like a bird it sits and sings, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

Then whets, and combs its silver wings, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

18

Imagine where you will be, and it will be so, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe, 2022 Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

22

Last night I had the strangest dream, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

All these moments will be lost in time, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

If it be now, ‘tis not to come, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

If it be not to come, it will be now, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

30

If it be not now, yet it will come, 2022

Oil and acrylic on linen

60 x 50 inches

152.4 x 127 cm

Drawing (hello darkness, my old friend), 2021

Gouache, watercolor and acrylic on paper

11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

30 x 25 cm

Drawing (my soul into the boughs does glide), 2021 Gouache, watercolor and acrylic on paper

11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

30 x 25 cm

Drawing (there like a bird it sits and sings), 2021

Gouache, watercolor and acrylic on paper

11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

30 x 25 cm

Drawing (then whets, and combs its silver wings), 2021

Gouache, watercolor and acrylic on paper

11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

30 x 25 cm

Drawing (imagine where you will be, and it will be so), 2022

Gouache and watercolor on paper

11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

30 x 25 cm

Drawing (all these moments will be lost in time), 2022

Gouache and watercolor on paper

11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

30 x 25 cm

Drawing (if it be now, ‘tis not to come),

and watercolor on

Drawing (if it be not to come, it will be now), 2022

Gouache and watercolor on paper

11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

30 x 25 cm

Drawing (if it be not now, yet it will come), 2022

Gouache and watercolor on paper

11 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches

30 x 25 cm

IL FAUT CULTIVER NOTRE JARDIN: FIONA RAE AND IWONA BLAZWICK

IWONA BLAZWICK: It is the 4th of July 2022, and we are at the East London studio of Fiona Rae looking at a new series of paintings. Although you have often played with language in your previous works, I don’t think I have ever seen such overtly literal text. For example, the word ‘the’ appears in the middle of the painting we are looking at now.

FIONA RAE: Ha—yes! The whole sentence is ‘My soul into the boughs does fly,’ from The Garden by Andrew Marvell—which is also the title of the painting. These new paintings embody quotes or phrases—the marks and gestures articulate letters and words, with lots of slippages and accidents along the way. Some of the words are legible and some far less so, but they are all distinctly articu lated in the moment that I paint them.

IB: It is an experiment, an exploration of new territories.

FR: The strategy here has been to focus on the language of language, of alphabets and texts, which were my first interest. I did begin an English degree at university but dropped out to go to art school instead. These new paintings are a continuation of that lifelong interest in the intelligibility and ambiguity of language. Using a phrase or quote is a conceptual structure to allow me to enter the act

of painting wholeheartedly, knowing that there’s a framework and that if things go badly awry, I can return to the idea, and within that find the free dom to continue.

IB: There’s a creative tension between a word like ‘my,’ or ‘soul,’ and the shapes you have used to express it—the painterly gesture and the palette. How do these things connect?

FR: The idea was not to illustrate the words. If there is an evocative word, I haven’t tried to make the paint illustrate what the word means, or indeed privilege it over others. It amused me that the word that really stands out in that painting is probably the least poetic word in the whole sen tence, the word ‘the’. I’m interested in running two language systems alongside each other and seeing what happens consequently. Each word in itself has a depth-charge of meaning and histo ries. Even letters carry their own associations. So, if the language of abstraction is also involved, what kind of image results and what kind of infor mation is generated?

IB: There are intimations of landscape, an aerial view of forms in the shape of islands. The word ‘the’ appears to be resting on a cloud, and there is an idea of falling and of tumbling across the space of the canvas.

FR: I love it when brush marks behave as if they think they are objects or sculptures. Or, as if they think they are wings, or clouds, or tables, or mice ears. Then there’s what that behavior does to the brush mark next to it. These landscape moments appear and disappear, airy-fairy cloud moments; it’s there and it’s not there, just arising out of the process. That’s the pleasure and the interest for me.

IB: You’ve got an exploration of text as a cogni tive process: but the way it’s depicted is like the unconscious, seeing the word ‘id’ (in the middle of ‘glide’) points to how a painting expresses two states of consciousness.

FR: I think that is what painting can offer and why it is such a live art-form. It is a way of mining all the different parts of your consciousness, your unconscious, your subconscious, and making some kind of experience out of them directly on the canvas. There’s something about the touch on the canvas that exhibits or exemplifies a set of feelings or ideas in that moment. For me, painting is the human brain and sensorium exposed and laid bare for another person to look at—or walk away from!

IB: Why these existential quotes about the nature of being and action, or inaction?

FR: Because they appeal to me, they seem both portentous and yet slightly comic. They seem to be part of our condition—those helpless, hopeless moments within which you try and find something of cheer or of optimism in order to continue. I’m

often thinking of Voltaire’s Candide ‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin’ (‘We must cultivate our garden’), because in the end what else is there? With the pandemic there was so much withdrawing inside oneself. The sentences I’ve chosen probably speak to that period we’ve all just been through.

IB: There is a Fiona Rae lexicon here, for example, the dotted line, which is very directional yet associated with formal and printed instructions or places for signatures.

FR: Yes, I’m interested in graphic instructions and signs that are unhelpful or lead nowhere in particular… also, this dotted line increases in size from a small dash to quite a big dash.

IB: There is a lot of movement, and dynamism, and impact—waves, reactions.

FR: As though brush marks have consequences!

IB: I think of that internal dynamic as a kind of machine whirring—interacting components com busting—it gives your paintings an extraordinary sense of movement. Yet, your compositions are also classically arranged, almost verging on still lifes. In this work, there is a kind of shelf, with sev eral elements lined up next to each other across a horizontal base like a sequence of objects.

FR: Doesn’t it feel like you could pick one up and put it on your mantlepiece? The arrangement of brush marks is like an arrangement of sculptures. They’re not just interfering with each other, they

are making little tableaux within the tableau of the painting. Pictures within pictures.

IB: For me, they are reminiscent of the New Generation sculptors of the 1960s—artists like Anthony Caro and Phillip King and their experiments with color and balance across the horizontal plane.

FR: I love Phillip King’s Tra La La, and Genghis Khan, aren’t they fantastic? It’s important to acknowledge that the digital age has exploded since those days and that space is no longer front, back, left and right. Things can shift and merge. The white ground for these paintings allows the white brush marks to slip and slide in the picture space as if in Photoshop.

IB: There is a tactile materiality to these areas of paint that evokes textiles.

FR: I did think of embroidery and samplers. As a child I used to do sewing, embroidery and patch work. I like that the work acknowledges something from the realm of craft, with the attention to sur face and texture.

IB: There is also the ‘all over-ness’ of the canvas. There is no horizon, no vanishing point, no hierarchy.

FR: I’m anti-hierarchical in life as well. These are quite anti-compositional. Everything has its place, whether it’s a tiny red flick or a huge turquoise swoop. The removal of compositional concerns is liberating with this series, although there is the

suggestion of a grid in some of the paintings here that helps with a sense of rhythm. I suppose that is a stand-in for composition, when things are placed on the axes of a grid.

IB: The paintings also feature these radiating straight lines, like quills of an arrow, or rays of sunlight, almost shooting outside the canvas. Some point to one another, as if they’re all in relation, but others lead the eye outside, so there’s a sense of an out of frame explosion.

FR: I’ve always liked the idea that there may be activity going on just beyond the picture frame that you can’t see, but that maybe you’ll see if you wait long enough or catch it unaware out of the corner of your eye. Also, things point off in the wrong direction. They slip off the edges or don’t quite make it onto the canvas, all of which play with the notion of what we expect to happen in a painting.

IB: How do you know when to stop?

FR: It’s when everything is taken care of and is as most itself as it can be. If there’s a yellow curvy brush mark, but there’s something wrong with the curve, then I can’t leave it like that. I don’t like it when something is half-executed because I am not sure whether I am supposed to ignore it as unintentionally disappointing or whether I am being asked to consider the notion of disappoint ment. It is to do with acknowledging the precision of painting as a language. Even if it is a vague, soft, almost not there brush mark—it should be precise and absolutely intended.

IB: Going back to this pictorial language—I’m reminded of the drawings of Dr. Seuss.

FR: The Cat in the Hat is often on my painting table!

IB: There are moments where you have added a flourish to an element which is already there, such as in the painting titled If it be not now, yet it will come. There is a series of lilac rhomboids which have developed these wonderful, whiskery tops like Dr. Seuss’s characters Thing One and Thing Two. I think there’s a comedic aspect to this.

FR: I do enjoy the absurdity and bathos that is possible with painting. I am reassured that Shakespeare too combines comedy and high feeling. I don’t want to sprinkle finishing touches everywhere but I needed something dark to fix the piece formally. Little hair tufts seemed to be the answer.

IB: They are spiky and so they draw the eye. You also create elements that come forward, beguile us, and then some things which will recede into the space of the painting. This resonates with our experience of the internet—of its infinite, horizon less spaces.

FR: Infinite spaces which shift before your very eyes…

IB: And again, images that suggest floating, cloud scapes, things which drop. So, there’s the world of physics… things evaporating, exploding, impacting.

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings, 2022

Liquids, osmosis, refraction. Everything is here. It’s like being in a laboratory or a physics lecture. All the different effects of the physical world are rep resented in some way.

FR: Have I made a Hadron Collider?!

IB: Some of these new paintings are very light, as if they might fly away. But the painting Present fears are less than horrible imaginings has a somber palette with its depth of color giving it gravitational weight.

FR: It’s got a toughness to it, hasn’t it? I put some rainbow brushstrokes in it to counter the dark colors in the middle of the painting.

IB: Is that symbolic?

FR: I suppose this painting comes closest to illus trating the sentence ‘Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.’ There is nothing light in Macbeth’s murderous thought, is there? I was thinking, ‘Well, what do you do with fear?’ You just have to go and look at a rainbow or buy a unicorn.

IB: This most powerfully evokes the nature of being. There is an anxiety or a sense of foreboding or loss. Then there’s life, the phenomenal world that we observe around us. And then there are associations, memories, ideas about what has to happen next—some are pragmatic and others are reveries, fantasies. I think this painting is an extraordinary illustration of consciousness. It’s linguistic and it’s pictorial, but it also has mood and emotion.

FR: I had some dark times last autumn for various reasons including the pandemic and I ended up expressing some of that on this canvas.

IB: It represents how all these things are in our consciousness. In being. There’s also an openness, in the sense of that brooding quality on one side of the canvas countered by lightness. There’s the optimism of the rainbow, a kitsch yet staggeringly beautiful thing, no matter how many times we’ve seen it. There’s also an explosion in the top lefthand corner, the black and the red that is very cinematic, or like an action comic, a violent moment in the canvas. This is in contrast to the prevalence of pastel colors in your work.

FR: There’s something irreverent or even icono clastic about using pastels as they are seen to belong to the world of cartoon and Japanese anime rather than the world of serious, expressive painting. Although, de Kooning was partial to ice cream colors and his work is full of angst. I wanted to explore a color scheme of light and dark that is at odds with itself and somewhat challenging. I used red and black to conjure up a spiky creature that you would not want to find in your closet and which functions as an antipathetic contrast to any loveliness. It’s actually part of the word ‘fear,’ so this is the closest I came to the painting of a word embodying its meaning. But then there’s a fluffy, pink feather boa curving up through the word to offer a counter balance and to introduce a doubt as to whether the moment is really quite so weighty after all.

IB: So, they are essentially optimistic?

FR: I think so, yes. They are very optimistic.

Iwona Blazwick OBE is the Emeritus Curator of Whitechapel Gallery in London, United Kingdom. She is Chair of the Royal Commission for AlUla’s Public Art Expert Panel in the Arabian Peninsula.

FIONA RAE

Born in 1963 in Hong Kong

Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

EDUCATION

1987

Goldsmiths College, London, United Kingdom

1984

Croydon College of Art, London, United Kingdom

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022

Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

Buchmann Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland

2021

“Fiona Rae: Many Colour’d Messenger,” Centre d’Art La Malmaison, Cannes, France

“Fiona Rae: Row Paintings,” Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

2020

“ABSTRACTS,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

2018

Hakgojae Cheongdam, Seoul, Korea

Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

2017

Buchmann Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland

2016

Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

2015

Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2014

“Fiona Rae: Drawings,” Buchmann Box, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

“Painter, Painter: Dan Perfect, Fiona Rae,” Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Nottingham, United Kingdom; traveled to Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, United Kingdom

2013

“Fiona Rae: New Paintings,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

“Fiona Rae: New Paintings,” Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2012

“Fiona Rae: Maybe you can live on the moon in the next century,” Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, United Kingdom; traveled to The New Art Gallery, Walsall, United Kingdom; and Towner, Eastbourne, United Kingdom

2011

Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

2010

“Fiona Rae: Special Fear!,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY

2009

“Fiona Rae: As I run and run, happiness comes closer,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

2008

Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2006

“Fiona Rae: You are the Young and the Hopeless,” PaceWildenstein, New York, NY

2005

“Fiona Rae: Grotto,” Buchmann Galerie, Cologne, Germany

2004

“Fiona Rae: Swag,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

2003

“Fiona Rae: Hong Kong Garden,” Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2002

Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France

2001

“Fiona Rae: New Paintings,” Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zürich, Switzerland

2000

Buchmann Galerie, Cologne, Germany

“fig-1,” Fragile House, London, United Kingdom

Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

1999

Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, NY

Kohji Ogura Gallery, Nagoya, Japan

1997

“Gary Hume and Fiona Rae,” Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, NY

“Fiona Rae: New Paintings,” The British School at Rome, Rome, Italy

1996

Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany

1995

Waddington Galleries, London, United Kingdom

1994

John Good Gallery, New York, NY

Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

1993

Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, United Kingdom

1992

Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland

1991

Waddington Galleries, London, United Kingdom

1990

Pierre Bernard Gallery, Nice, France

Third Eye Center, Glasgow, Scotland

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2022

“Hommage à Shirley Jaffe,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

“Peinture: obsolescence déprogrammée. Licences libres,” Musée de l’Hospice Saint Roch, Issoudun, France

“Belonging,” The Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland

2021

“Kindred Spirits,” The Harley Gallery, Worksop, United Kingdom

“Explorations in Paint,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Inauguration Show,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

“Masterpieces in Miniature: The 2021 Model Art Gallery,” Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, United Kingdom

“Summer Show,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels, Belgium

“ColourSpace,” Mucciaccia Gallery, Rome, Italy

“Wonderland,” Albertina Modern, Vienna, Austria

“High Emission Zone,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

2020

“UnRealism,” Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, digital

“The 252nd Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Hier, Aujourd’hui, Demain: Works from the Mudam Collection,” Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

2019

“Reason Gives No Answers: Selected Works from the Collection,” Newport Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Stairway to Heaven: Abstraction Now,” Coombs Contemporary, London, United Kingdom

“Alles Farbe! Jörn Stoya und die Sammlung des Museum Morsbroich,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany

“Sixty Years,” Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

2018

“Content is a Glimpse,” Efremidis Gallery, Berlin, Germany

“Women Power Protest,” Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom

“Darkness into Light: The Emotional Power of Art,” Millenium Gallery, Museums Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

“The 250th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Paintings from the 1980s and 1990s,” Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

“Double Jeu,” Le Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie, Aurillac, France

“Surface Work,” Victoria Miro, London, United Kingdom

“Malevolent Eldritch Shrieking,” Attercliffe™, Sheffield, United Kingdom

“Jerwood Collection: 25 Years,” Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, United Kingdom

2017

“Objects are closer than they appear,” Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

“The 249th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“I Want! I Want!: Art & Technology,” Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom

“Group Exhibition,” Park Hyatt Paris Vendome, Paris, France

2016

“Zeichnung,” Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

“Drama Queens. Die Inszenierte Sammlung,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany

“Non Figuratif - un regain d’intérêt?” Centre d’Art Contemporain Meymac, Meymac, France

“Retour au meilleur des mondes,” Le Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain d’Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France

“Conversation autour d’une collection,” Villa Bernasconi, Centre d’Art, Grand-Lancy, Switzerland

“The 248th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Paradoxes of the Ivory Tower: Painting and Pictorial Elements in the Norlinda and José Lima Collection,” Oliva Creative Factory, São João da Madeira, Portugal

“Turn the Colour Down!,” Turps Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Ce que fait le printemps avec les cerisiers (Pablo Neruda),” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

2015

“The 247th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Imagining a University: Fifty Years of The University of Warwick Art Collection,” Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, United Kingdom

“La Vie de Château. Œuvres de la Collection,” Musée d’Art Contemporain de la Haute-Vienne - Château de Rochechouart, Rochechouart, France

“La Colección: La Colección de Pintura Contemporánea de la Fundación Barrié por Primera Vez en Madrid,” CentroCentro, Madrid, Spain

2014

“Group Exhibition,” Waddington Custot Galleries, London, United Kingdom

“Here Today…,” The Old Sorting Office, London, United Kingdom

“Globetrotter,” Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria

“Prophetic Diagrams II,” Cheymore Gallery, Tuxedo Park, New York, NY

“As I run and run, happiness comes closer,” Hôtel Beaubrun, Paris, France

“Bad Boy!,” New Art Projects, London, United Kingdom

“Between Worlds,” Galerie Isa, Mumbai, India

“The 246th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“(detail),” H-Project Space, Bangkok, Thailand; traveled to Transition Gallery, London, United Kingdom and The Usher Gallery, Lincoln, United Kingdom

“Within/Beyond Borders: The Collection of the European Investment Bank,” Banco de Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal

2013

“La Présence des Lucioles, La Collection,” Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France

“Art Britannia,” Madonna Building, Miami, FL

“Donation Florence et Daniel Guerlain,” Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

“Here We Go, Part 2: Volume,” Karsten Schubert, London, United Kingdom

“Summer Saloon Show,” Lion & Lamb Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2012

“Prophetic Diagrams,” George and Jörgen, London, United Kingdom

“RA Now,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Encounter: The Royal Academy in Asia,” Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore; traveled to Katara Cultural Village Foundation, Doha, Qatar

“London Twelve,” City Gallery Prague, The Stone Bell House, Prague, Czech Republic

“The 244th Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Outside In,” Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“A Private Affair: Personal Collections of Contemporary Art,” Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, United Kingdom

“Hors les murs,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels, Belgium

2011

“Colección de Pintura Contemporánea Internacional,” Fundación Barrié, A Coruña, Spain

“American and European Painting from the Marx Collection,” Atlas Szutki, Lódź, Poland; traveled to the National Museum, Szczecin, Poland

“Making a Scene,” Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, United Kingdom

“Within/Beyond Borders,” Byzantine & Christian Museum, Athens, Greece

“Unearthed,” Warton House, London, United Kingdom

“Not for Sale,” Passage de Retz, Paris, France

“The 243rd Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Collection: 25 ans et 1 été,” Musée d’Art Contemporain de la Haute-Vienne - Château de Rochechouart, Rochechouart, France

“Between Film and Art,” Kunsthalle Emden, Emden, Germany; traveled to Deutsche Kinemathek–Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin, Germany

2010

“New Art Now,” Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom

“50 Years at Pace,” The Pace Gallery, New York, NY

“The 242nd Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy, London, United Kingdom

“40,” Texas Gallery, Houston, TX

“Babel,” Le Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain d’Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France

“…um so mehr,” Kunsthalle Göppingen, Göppingen, Germany

“ART: curated by Michael Craig-Martin,” Galerie Haas und Fuchs, Berlin, Germany

“Rappel à l’Oeuvre,” Maison du Geste et de l’Image, Paris, France

“Palm Paintings,” Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

2009

“Une Place au Soleil,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

“Classified: Contemporary British Art from Tate Collection,” Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

“La Rose Pourpre du Caire,” Le Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie, Aurillac, France

“Antes de Ayer y Pasado Mañana; o lo que Puede ser Pintura Hoy,” Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Union Fenosa, A Coruña, Spain

“Plastic Culture: Legacies of Pop 1986 - 2008,” Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, United Kingdom; traveled to The Exchange, Penzance, United Kingdom; and Bradford 1 Gallery, Bradford, United Kingdom

“Ventriloquist,” Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Splash the Stuff Down: Painting and Revelation,” Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, United Kingdom

2008

“A Pace Menagerie,” Pace Prints, New York, NY

“Contemporary Prints and Drawings,” Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

“Group Show,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels, Belgium

“Freeze 20,” The Hospital Club, London, United Kingdom

“Summer Show,” Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Toute la Collection du Frac Île-de-France (ou presque),” Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France

“Paixóns Privadas, Visions Publicas,” Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo, Vigo, Spain

“Out of Storage 1: Chosen Paintings from the Collection,” Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

2007

“Reset: Werke aus der Sammlung Marx,” Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany

“De leur temps (2) Art contemporain & collections privées en France,” Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, France

“À Travers le Miroir (le secret),” Le Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie, Aurillac, France

“The 239th Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Out of Art: From The Collection of Ernesto Esposito,” CentrePasquArt, Kunsthaus Centre d’Art, Biel, Switzerland

“100 Jahre Kunsthalle Mannheim,” Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

“Twilight Musings,” One in the Other, London, United Kingdom

2006

“Piktogramme: die Einsamkeit der Zeichen,” Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

“VIP III: Arena der Abstraktion,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany

“Hot Spring… In Autumn,” Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, Austria

“Full House: Faces of a Collection,” Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

“Fiction @ Love / Forever Young Land,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China; concurrently exhibited with “Fiction @ Love / Twinkling Stars,” Bund 18 Creative Center, Shanghai, China; traveled as “Fiction @ Love / Ultra New Vision of Contemporary Art,” Singapore Art Museum, Singapore

2005

“Revelation: Reflecting British Art in the Arts Council Collection,” Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

“Baroque and Neo-Baroque/The Hell of the Beautiful,” DA2 Domus Artium 2002, Fundación Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura y Saberes, Salamanca, Spain

“Ordering the Ordinary,” Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Blumenstück, Künstlers Glück: vom Paradiesgärtlein zur Prilblume,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany

“Colours and Trips,” Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn and Taxis, Bregenz, Austria; traveled to Museum der Stadt Ratingen, Ratingen, Germany

“Lorie Peters Lauthier Collects,” Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

2004

“Le Syndrome de Babylone,” Centre d’Art Contemporain de la Villa du Parc, Annemasse, France

“Direct Painting – Neue Kunsthalle IV,” Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

“Summer Eyes/Summarize,” Jan Weiner, Kansas City, MO

“Art in New Spaces,” Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom

“Paranormal,” Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels, Belgium

2003

“A Bigger Splash: Arte Britânica da Tate 1960–2003,” Pavilhão Lucas, Nogueira Garcez, São Paulo, Brazil

“New Abstract Painting/Painting Abstract Now,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany

“Inaugural Group Show,” Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Paintings: Arturo Herrera, Dennis Hollingsworth, Fiona Rae, Juan Uslé,” Buchmann Galerie, Cologne, Germany

“Painting Pictures: Painting and Media in the Digital Age,” Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany

“La Langue dans la Boue,” Musée du Tapis et des Arts Textiles, Clermont-Ferrand, France

“Talking Pieces: text und bild in der neuen kunst,” Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany

2002

“Peintures, contrainte ou recette,” Galeries du Cloître, École des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, Rennes, France

“The Rowan Collection: Contemporary British and Irish Art,” Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland

2001

“Künsterlerräume / Sammlerräume,” Kunstverein St. Gallen im Kunstmuseum, Zürich, Switzerland

“Works on Paper,” Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, NY

“Hybrids: International Contemporary Painting,” Tate Liverpool, United Kingdom

2000

“Europe: Different Perspectives in Painting / Europa: Differenti Prospettive nella Pittura,” Museo Michetti, Palazzo San Domenico, Francavilla al Mare, Italy

“Zeitgenossen/Contemporaries: Malerei/Paintings,” Galerie Edition Kunsthandel, Essen, Germany

“Aspectos de la Coleccion,” Fundación “la Caixa,” Madrid, Spain

1999

“Colour Me Blind! Painting in the Age of Computer Games and Comics,” Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; traveled to Städtische Ausstellungshalle am Hawerkamp, Muenster, Germany; and Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, United Kingdom

“45-99: A Personal View of British Painting and Sculpture,” Kettles Yard, Cambridge, United Kingdom; traveled to The City Gallery, Leicester, UK

“Sensation: Young British Artists from The Saatchi Collection,” Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY

“Reconciliations,” DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY

1998

“UK Maximum Diversity,” Benger Fabrik, Bregenz, Austria; traveled to Atelierhaus der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, Austria

“Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection,” Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany

“Up to 2000,” Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, United Kingdom

“Inaugural Exhibition,” Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, NY

1997

“The Prophecy of Pop,” Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA

“Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection,” Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

“Paintings and Sculpture,” Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, NY

“Ian Davenport, Michael Craig-Martin, Zebedee Jones, Michael Landy, Fiona Rae,” Waddington Galleries, London, United Kingdom

“Confrontation,” Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

“Treasure Island,” Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal

1996

“Nuevas Abstracciones,” Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Reína Sofia, Madrid, Spain; traveled to Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany; and Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain

“About Vision: New British Painting in the 1990s,” Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, United Kingdom; traveled to The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, United Kingdom; The Wolsey Art Gallery, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, United Kingdom; and Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

1995

“Des limites du tableau: les possibles de la peinture,” Musée d’Art Contemporain de la Haute-Vienne - Château de Rochechouart, Rochechouart, France

“Malerei. Sechs Bilder-Sechs Posititionen,” Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Düsseldorf, Germany

“From Here,” Waddington Galleries and Karsten Schubert, London, United Kingdom

“Repicturing Abstraction,” Marsh Art Gallery, University of Virginia, Richmond, VA

1994

“New Painting from the Arts Council Collection,” Gallery Oriel, Dublin, Ireland

“Here and Now,” Serpentine Galleries, London, United Kingdom

“Chance, Choice and Irony,” Todd Gallery, London, United Kingdom; traveled to John Hansard Gallery, The University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

“Unbound: Possibilities in Painting,” Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1993

“A Decade of Collecting: Patrons of New Arts Gifts 1983–1993,” Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Hardcore (the first part),” Factual Nonsense, London, United Kingdom

“Nancy Haynes, James Hyde, Walter Obholzer, Fiona Rae, David Row, Karin Sander, Juan Uslé, Leslie Wayne,” John Good Gallery, New York, NY

“Moving into View: Recent British Painting,” Royal Festival Hall, London, United Kingdom

“Color,” Pamela Auchincloss Gallery, New York, NY

1992

“New Voices: Recent Paintings from the British Council Collection,” Centre de Conférences Albert Borschette, Brussels, Belgium; traveled to Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg; Istanbul

Greater City Municipality Taksim Art Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey; Ankara State Fine Arts Gallery, Izfas Gallery, Izmur, Turkey; Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao, Spain; Santa Monica Contemporary Art Centre, Barcelona, Spain; Centro Cultural Galileo, Madrid, Spain; Verónicas, Sala des Exposiciones, Murcia, Spain; and Pescaderia Vieja, Sala de Arte, Jerez, Spain

“The Contemporary Art Society: Eighty Years of Collecting,” Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom; traveled to Maclaurin Gallery, Ayr, United Kingdom; Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol, United Kingdom; and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom

“Play Between Fear and Desire,” Germans van Eck Gallery, New York, NY

1991

“The Contemporary Art Society: Eighty Years of Collecting,” Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Turner Prize Exhibition,” Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“La Metafisica della Luce,” John Good Gallery, New York, NY

“John Moores Liverpool Exhibition XVII,” Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom

“Abstraction,” Waddington Galleries, London, United Kingdom

“A View of London,” Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria

“Invitational,” Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, NY

“British Art from 1930,” Waddington Galleries, London, United Kingdom

“Who Framed Modern Art or the Quantitative Life of Roger Rabbit,” Sidney Janis Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1990

“Voorwerk 1,” Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

“Rudolf Fila, Tim Head, Alain Miller, Fiona Rae, Anthony Wilson,” Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, United Kingdom

“Aperto,” 44th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy

“The British Art Show,” McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, United Kingdom; traveled to Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, United Kingdom; and Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1989

“Contemporary London,” Galerie im Kreishaus, Cologne, Germany

“Promises, promises,” Serpentine Gallery, London, United Kingdom; traveled to L’École de Nîmes, Nîmes, France

“New Year, New Talent ’89,” Anderson O´Day Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1988

“Freeze,” Surrey Docks, London, United Kingdom

AWARDS AND COMMISSIONS

2018

Royal Mail Stamp Design Commission for the 250th Anniversary of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

2017

Curator of the Invited Room, The 249th Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, London, United Kingdom

2015

Honorary Fellowship, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, United Kingdom

2011-15

Professor of Painting for the Royal Academy Schools, London, United Kingdom

2011–13

Tate Members’ Artist Commission, London, United Kingdom

2010

Curator of the Invited Room, The 242nd Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, London, United Kingdom

2005–09

Appointed as Tate Artist Trustee, London, United Kingdom

2007

Shortlisted for the Charles Wollaston Award, Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

2005

Master Artist in Residence at Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL

2002–05

Tate Modern Restaurant Commission, London, United Kingdom

2003

BBC Art Site Installation Commission, BBC Broadcasting House Public Art Program, London, United Kingdom

2002

Elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

1993

Shortlisted for the Eliette von Karajan Prize for Young Painters, Salzburg, Austria

1991

Shortlisted for the Turner Prize, Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

SELECT COLLECTIONS

The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, NY

Arts Council England, London, United Kingdom

Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom

British Council, London, United Kingdom

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal

Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France

Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

Contemporary Art Society, London, United Kingdom

Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France

Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France

Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain d’Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France

Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain d’Île-de-France, Paris, France

Fundación Barrié, A Coruña, Spain Fundación “la Caixa,” Barcelona, Spain

Government Art Collection, United Kingdom

Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany

Jerwood Collection, London, United Kingdom

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds, United Kingdom

Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

Musée d’Art Contemporain de la Haute-VienneChâteau de Rochechouart, Rochechouart, France

Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany

National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, United Kingdom

Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Sintra, Portugal

Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, United Kingdom

Tate Collection, London, United Kingdom

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Warwick University Art Collection, Warwick, United Kingdom

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

FIONA RAE

20 October – 26 November 2022

Miles McEnery Gallery

511 West 22nd Street

New York NY 10011

tel +1 212 445 0051

www.milesmcenery.com

Publication © 2022 Miles McEnery Gallery

All rights reserved

Essay © 2022 Christina Rees

Interview © 2022 Iwona Blazwick and Fiona Rae

All works © Fiona Rae

Director of Exhibitions

Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY

Photography by

Antony Makinson, Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, London, United Kingdom

Color separations by Echelon, Los Angeles, CA

Catalogue designed by McCall Associates, New York, NY

ISBN: 978-1-949327-89-2

Cover: If it be not to come, it will be now, (detail), 2022