Michael Berryhill + Rainen Knecht
RARE ALCHEMY
RA is pleased to announce the first exhibition of the New Year 2024, and this time under the RA moniker Rare Alchemy. The exhibition features works by Michael Berryhill (Ellenville, NY) and Rainen Knecht (Portland, OR) and focuses on figurative paintings of lightness and dark.
Michael Berryhill moves like an archeologist, digging and scraping through the earth of his canvas and shaping the luminous dust clouds that arise from this labor into mysterious talismans of color and form. The shapes that emerge carry parts of the real world across a threshold and into new territory of abstraction and figuration. Michael received his MFA from Columbia University in 2009 and his recent solo shows include Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Derek Eller, NYC; and Kate Werble, NYC.
Rainen Knecht’s work is as alluring and repugnant as a mirror can be to one’s self, and as truthful. Rainen confronts us with domestic spaces that descend beneath the sapient surface of motherhood entering a shadowy notion of maternal fantasy and dark sublime populated by demons, ghouls, animal-mother and child. Rainen received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2006 and her recent solo shows include Fourteen30, Portland, OR; Melanie Flood Projects, Portland, OR; and PLATFORM, Zoe Fisher Projects online via David Zwirner.