Carla Rippey. Cuando Mi Mangre Aún No Era Mi Sangre, 2008-2016 (detail); photo transfer and thread on paper; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

The circular structure of the exhibition emphasizes this intertwined relationship. On the interior wall, a few works are displayed alongside a detailed timeline of the artist’s life. Biographical events, which include falling in love, expatriating after leaving the United States, escaping from political repression during the Chilean coup, and then building a life and career in Mexico, are in dialogue with the artist’s work on the exterior walls and galleries. Just like the installation that opens the show, this curatorial structure mimics the way that individuals and artists interact with their social and political realities. Surrounding the timeline that represents the details of Rippey’s life are works that bring forth how all the big world events and ideas are lived personally.

Many of the works in the show speak to the fragility of personal agency when confronting political power. In Paisaje con Buitre [Landscape with Vulture] (1993), the artist depicts a desert landscape with a herd of camels, a few shepherds, and the cadaver of an animal in the foreground. A military helicopter hovers above the whole scene. Both the people and the animals depicted await their fate beneath rapacious forces they cannot control.

Carla Rippey. Choose Your Weapon, Catalogo de Objetos Peligrosos, 2010; photo transfer and thread on paper; each panel: 23.5 x 15.75 in. Courtesy of the Artist and the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. Photo: Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil.

In another work, the relationship between the signifier of power and the human subject is more ambiguous. La Persistencia de la Memoria [The Persistence of Memory] (1987) is a drawing of two women in two separate panels who are surrounded by knives. The panel on the left depicts a woman in historical clothing that extends into the right panel, which depicts a vulnerable, naked woman peering back at the other woman. It is unclear if the knives are menacing the women, who are locked together by history, or if they are being wielded as tools against the persistence of memory. 

Choose Your Weapon, Catalogo de Objetos Peligrosos [Choose Your Weapon, Catalog of Dangerous Objects] (2010) explicitly presents this equivocation. The artist depicts tools of every sort on multiple panels. They range from what we consider mostly benign, like hands and teeth, to weapons including knives and machine guns. The work and its title emphasizes that both resistance and domination are ambiguous acts created by individuals who are neither merely perpetrators nor victims.

Carla Pippey. Carnaval, 2001; graphite on paper; 31.5 x 55 in. Courtesy of private collector and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

As a whole, Resguardo y Resistencia presents individuals, particularly women, subjected to forces and environments much greater than they are. The formal qualities of all of the works in the exhibition suggest that the artist’s primary goal is to show care and empathy for her subjects. The simultaneously descriptive and expressive lines, negative spaces, shading, and compositions all evince the hand of an artist who is committed to her work and bringing out the emotive qualities of her subjects.

One drawing in particular presents this in a clear and troubling way. Carnaval (2001) depicts a carefully rendered adolescent girl in a revealing top, surrounded by empowered and raucous older men. She looks directly at the viewer with an expression that approaches fear or insecurity. It’s ambiguous, however, why she is there. None of the men pay direct attention to her. She seems to have chosen to explore and experiment with her nascent sexuality only to find herself in a dangerous, masculinist environment.

The world reflected in Rippey’s retrospective is filled with risk, violence, and forces that are outside of any individual’s control. In circumstances such as these, what could be more important than resguardo y resistencia?

Carla Rippey: Resguardo y Resistencia. Exposición Retrospectiva 1976–2016 will be on view at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City through October 30, 2016.

* The title translates roughly as “self-protection and resistance,” but resguardo means not just “protection” but also “care.”

Darren Reid. North Mill, 2012; acrylic on canvas; 23.6 x 23.6 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

North Mill (2012) is a rendition of the view outside his house at the time he began to paint. Prior to his artistic practice, works of old painting masters such as Caravaggio, Canaletto, and Holbein held an allure for Reid. “The skill required to render something so perfectly in paint always fascinated me,” Reid explains. Referencing Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533) as an example of work that inspired a love for intricate craftsmanship, Reid is also drawn to the genre for its documentary value, especially in this post-photography age.

Darren Reid. The Things We Leave Behind, 2013; acrylic on canvas; 31.4 x 31.4 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

For example, in The Things We Leave Behind (2013), Reid wanted to capture the destruction generated by the rapid development happening in his local environment. In painting, the technical rigor required to render a realistic image demands a concomitantly higher level of attention from the viewer; it calls for a deeper engagement with the subject matter at hand. And even though the current fad in contemporary painting encourages more abstract forms, the interest Reid’s work has garnered thus far indicates that skill is still an appreciated quality in art.

Darren Reid. Before the Storm, 2015 (detail); acrylic on canvas; 55.1 x 27.5 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Reid’s process is simple but laborious. He begins by taking a number of photographs of scenes and landscapes that are familiar to him, and then selects the image that he finds most technically challenging. In the process of making Before the Storm (2015), for instance, Reid meticulously outlined every detail in the image before he painted it, and the result is a picture-perfect depiction of a harbor in Brixham, uncanny in its photographic quality. The question Reid faces is this: Why create paintings identical to photographs when he could paint from imagination? For Reid, his painting practice might be labeled as photorealist, but his interpretation of the images he chooses to paint has a narrative quality not always prevalent in photographs.

Darren Reid. Before the Storm, 2015; acrylic on canvas; 55.1 x 27.5 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Reid spends 200–250 hours on each painting. Works such as Sunrise, I Left You Sleeping (2015), with its challenging composition of minuscule proportions, reveal the artist’s knack for perfecting the details. For a self-taught painter who has had no formal training in painting, the skill and dexterity with which Reid produces his work is formidable. In some ways, the lack of an art education has been liberating for Reid, who started painting out of a simple desire to fill his homebound time, with no real regard for the art market and its demands. Described as “emotionally quiet,” Reid’s paintings reflect the inherent calmness in the act of painting.

Darren Reid. Sunrise, I Left You Sleeping, 2015; acrylic on canvas; 62.9 x 33.4 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Darren Reid is an artist based in Belper, England. His work is focused on contemporary realism painting, for which he was shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize in 2014. Reid is represented by Plus One Gallery in London.

Wires Ripped (2009-10) Wood veneer, shellac. 61" x 29"

The unusual medium draws you in. A first glance might suggest that Taylor’s work is painted, but a closer look reveals that the compositions are actually blade-thin fragments of wood inlaid in panels. The pieces in the show are all crafted with pleasurable attention to detail: up-close viewing shows the joins to fit together perfectly without gaps, lumps, or smudges of glue. Taylor is self-taught, so her obvious facility with the fragile veneer is particularly impressive.

In Foreclosed, Taylor’s overarching concept was to respond to “the human impact of the short-sighted policies and greed that triggered millions of foreclosures.” The works in the exhibition can be divided into two categories: portraits of people, and portraits of destruction. Somewhat perversely, the work shines when it reveals the kicked walls, torn out electricals, or water-damaged ceilings of the vacant houses. These, such as the photorealistic Wires Ripped (2009-10), marry the materials and vision—wood veneer creating an image of ravaged drywall and wood studs—that moves the work beyond skill and into the realm of distinction. Taylor’s adept use of the medium is a reversal of the careless damage, creating a tense, almost anxious connection between the image and its flawless ground. Rendered in sumptuous detail, the ravaged drywall and cracked wood studs are a perfect stand-in for the economic and emotional destruction of domestic bliss laid to waste.

Squatter Doorway (2009) Wood veneer, shellac. 53" x 46 1/2"

Another example, the large Squatter Doorway (2009) is an interior view of a ragged hole in the exterior wall of a house, where wooden slats and scraps of decorative molding are nailed to make a sloppy latticework barricade against intruders. Beyond the slats are glimpses of the normally-invisible framing of the wall, and still further beyond, a peek into the yard and wooden siding of the house. What fascinates here, aside from the beauty and precision of the execution, is the conceptual dimensionality: wood is the structural material used to depict the material structure. There is a lucid circularity to it, a completeness that holds the subject matter to the physicality of the work. Another large piece, the installation Tap Left On (2009-10), portrays a water-damaged ceiling to the same brilliant effect.

Tap Left On (2009-10) Wood veneer, shellac. 71" x 75" x 48"

The portraits, unfortunately, don’t have the same conceptual texture. The Pyrographist (2009) is obviously executed with equal skill. A smiling bespectacled woman stands proudly in front of her creations, a series of wood-burned nature scenes on the paneled wall behind her. But without the ideological marriage of the subject to the medium, it falls flat.

The Pyrographist (2009) Wood veneer, pyrography, shellac. 46" x 40"

Interestingly, reviews of her work to date have not raised the issue of craft qua craft. Marquetry is a practice typically limited to popular subjects or patterning on functional objects like tables. Taylor’s work displays an unmistakable mastery of woodworking, unusual in the contemporary arts but vital to traditional craft. Instead of being a detractor, this association with folksiness seems to bolster the overall theme of the exhibition. By using an atypical yet unthreatening medium, Taylor reveals an accessible but still intriguing vision of loss and anger.