A solo exhibition of work by Bonnie Rychlak, an artist and curator, opens Thursday at the Bridgehampton Museum’s Tractor Barn on its Corwith Homestead campus. A reception will be held Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m., and the show will continue through Sept. 6.
While this will be Rychlak’s first solo show at the museum, she is represented in its permanent collection and has been included in two previous group exhibitions there. The show is focused on her encaustic works, which will be hung on the walls as well as placed on the floor. The viewer can engage with the pieces by walking around them and looking into hidden cavities that contain internal patterning and structures.
Rychlak has said, “Objects placed on the floor — my drains, anyway — imply something underground, underneath. So it might be read that what is vertical is freeing, upward is joyful, whereas works on the ground are considered abject, not aspirational.”
In a catalog essay, Jo Anna Isaak, an art historian and curator, writes, “The iconic circular form associated with the drain motif is retained in most of these newer works, but not the representation of the drain; instead, actual metal kitchen or bathroom drains are inserted into the protruding forms. This move from representation to direct inclusion of the object itself intensifies the dialogue between art and everyday life, grounding the abstract forms in a tangible, recognizable reality.”
Rychlak, who divides her time between Manhattan and Springs, worked at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City for 30 years, eight as the artist’s studio assistant, nine as registrar, and 13 as curator.
