Miami-based conceptual artist and painter Rachel Lee Hovnanian will unveil her latest series of paintings at COUNTY Gallery in Palm Beach on March 8.
Uncle Henri, Rachel Lee Hovnanian, 2024
Created during the lockdown of Covid, BEYOND THE HEDGES, features 9 large-scale oil on canvas depictions of individuals and couples in outdoor pool and garden settings, accompanied by 9 mixed-media oil and acrylic on canvas paintings of women’s robes fading into wallpaper or fading into the depths of garden hedge, and a collection of work on paper robes. The show is dedicated to her friend, the late gallerist David Beitzel, who first showed Hovnanian’s figurative work in New York over 20 years ago.
Flamingo Pink Robe, Rachel Lee Hovnanian, 2024
“One year after his death,” Hovnanian says, “the world unexpectedly shut down because of Covid 19. Alone in the studio feeling helpless. People around the world were suffering. We were all alone even with the use of technology. I felt the pain of others and my own pain. I picked up my paint brush and started working on this body of work.”
Using printed photographs, painting, advertising, and mixed media to create heavily layered canvases, images of nature, and reconfigured landscapes, Hovnanian creates a hyper-real environment in which the lush green foliage may appear inviting and beautiful, but also serves as a barrier that reinforces the sense of isolation and confinement each of her subjects experience. The bright blues and greens of the pool, pool house, garden, topiary, and hedges stand in stark contrast to the aloof, blank faces of the people depicted in her artwork. The hedges also symbolize how power shapes our social interactions, creating a sense of separation and distance between those with access to the pool or garden and those without access.
While the pandemic brought unprecedented challenges, including isolation, fear, and uncertainty, Hovnanian’s paintings transport the viewer to a realm of reflection, meditation, and hope. The strong colors symbolize her belief in resilience and enduring spirit, and express the unity and optimism she, herself, has learned to rely on in the face of adversity.
In advance of her opening at COUNTY Gallery in Palm Beach, PALMER spoke to Artist Rachel Hovnanian…
Born in West Virginia and raised in Houston, Texas. Hovnanian’s multidisciplinary practice explores the complexities of modern feminism, ideals of perfection, and the effects of media on the collective consciousness. She received her BFA from the University of Texas, Austin, and has since exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
In 2023, her Mind the Body installation was selected as part of a group exhibition in Pietrasanta, Italy, which was later exhibited as part of a group exhibition of female sculptors, The Divine Feminine, on view at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens until April 2024. Her work is also part of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection at The Bunker in West Palm Beach.
Mind the Body, 2023, by Rachel Lee Hovnanian (Photo: Oriol Tarridas)
PALMER: You are in two local museums, The Bunker and the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens. This new work, entitled Beyond the Hedges, seems to be a departure from those works. Would you please explain?
RH: I am very honored to have my “neon” work at The Bunker, my “army of bathing suits” sculpture at Ann Norton, and now my paintings at COUNTY, but while this new work may seem like a departure from my other work, it’s actually a return to my figurative work. My son and his friends have been encouraging me to return to it for years, but it wasn’t until Covid that I picked it back up again. I was in Miami during the lockdown and it just seemed like the right time – but to talk about it in a different way. I was new to Miami – this lush place, and no one was around. I would take walks and see all these big hedges and wonder what was going on behind them. It was during a time we had no contact with each other. Thank God we had Zoom and technology, but on the other side, I remember being invited to a Zoom cocktail party and thinking it was exciting. I got all dressed up, bought some coconut shrimp, like a real cocktail party! It was great to see everyone, but after that Zoom, I never did it again. I found being together without that human touch, that closeness, just wasn’t the same. We all missed each other and it was fun to connect and have a few laughs, but we all still felt this emptiness. Technology just could not replace that human closeness.
Happy Hour Clock, Rachel Lee Hovnanian, 2018.
PALMER: Does your light / clock piece at The Bunker have to do with Alcoholism – or some alcohol related trauma?
Yes, my father had an issue with alcohol, and was an alcoholic. We never talked about it. Growing up in Houston, I thought it was something only I was experiencing. Everyone else’s house seemed perfect, and my house was…not so perfect. My father was brilliant and a wonderful human, but it’s a disease, and my mother would have to protect us. When he would drink, he could get loud, and my mother would have to pack us up in the car and we would leave. The light piece, Happy Hour, is about that. You know, there’s that phrase about every hour being happy hour. Well, at my house, every hour was happy hour, but it really wasn’t happy hour, it was always sad hour. In my pieces, I always try to have some light and cheerful colors that invite people in, but there’s always a deeper meaning and dark side to it as well, so you can see both sides of it.
PALMER: Who are some of your other Palm Beach collectors?
RH: Carol Mack, Christine & Stephen Schwarzman, Pauline Boardman, Rob L’Esperance, and Eleanora Kennedy to name a few…
Angels Listening, 2022, by Rachel Lee Hovnanian
PALMER: What’s next?
RH: I’ve been working on a show based on my 2022 Venice Bienniale exhibition, Angels Listening, where people were asked to write something they couldn’t say or didn’t say during Covid. This goes back to technology again. I thought coming out of Covid, people probably had a lot to say because we had been so isolated, and could only speak through our technology. I felt people were also nervous to speak, they were worried they were going to be misunderstood, they didn’t own that information, it’s not private anymore. And I decided to make the angel -which I had made earlier -in a much larger scale.
And again it relates back to when I was a kid, and I didn’t want anyone to know that I had an alcoholic father. I didn’t think anybody else was having issues, I just thought it was me who was having issues. And my family didn’t talk about it because we didn’t want to be embarrassed, so for the Bienniale, I asked people to write these things down and I created an installation out of the thousands and thousands of messages I received. And I made listening maps so people could come and read what they were struggling with, and it was anonymous.
This upcoming show is called, You Are Not Alone, Angels Listening, and will take place in the city of Pietrasanta, Italy – a city where Botero and many others artists have shown their work as well. I work in a foundry not far from there – it’s where I made the bathing suits, and the angels that are in this show, and I’m also doing a large teddy bear, called Poor Teddy in Repose, about children turning to technology instead of each other just to talk about how technology is great, but we also need the human touch.
And I’m coming out with a book as well called, You Are Not Alone, which will include 160 of these messages, just to have people understand that a lot of people are suffering, but they’re so scared to talk about it, or they want to say something, but they feel like they can’t say it without being judged.”
You Are Not Alone, Angels Listening opens March 30 in Chiesa di Sant’ Agostino in Pietrasanta, Italy, alongside an installation of a monumental large-scale sculpture, Poor Teddy in Repose, in the Pietrasanta Square.
