RACHEL LOWTHER

November 8 - 30, 1996

press release:
Chamber is pleased to announce an exhibition of new sculpture by Rachel Lowther. The opening reception is on Friday, November 8 from 6-9 pm and continues through November 30.

This is Rachel Lowther's first solo show at Chamber. Her work has been included in "By the Way" at Leipziger Strasse, Frankfurt, Germany; "Museum am Olberg", Edelbach, Germany; "No Vacancies", Hanauer Landstrasse, Frankfurt, Germany; "Retrospective", solo show, L'Etant D'Art pour Loctaire, Montpellier, France; "John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award", National Portrait Gallery, London. She attended the Stadelschule, Frankfurt, Germany, and the Chelsea College of Art and Design, London.

Lowther shows three lifesize monochromatic cast resin sculptures: a puma with matted furwalking through mud, a leopard eating meat, and a fallen deer. Enacting a metaphor of animal existence in nature they are confrontational, yet understated. The animals that Lowther constructs appear as frozen gestures. This silent tension forms a boundary across which the viewer is simultaneously drawn and repelled.

These figures suggest a dream of submitting to the force of nature, of being propelled towards death. Detached from these works, yet relating closely to them in its compassionate depiction of love, death and faith, stands a two foot high copy of Michelangelo's early Pieta in wet clay, affording the striking view from above. Vulnerable and impermanent it rejects reason, and exists as an admission of an original human impulse.