The River Library of Raquel Rabinovich & The Gateless Gates
Raquel Rabinovich’s work is about transformative confrontation. When she creates art she experiences no gate, no barrier, no inside and outside. She and her work becomes one and passes through the gateless gate. In the process of working –layer upon layer of lines, marks, paint, glass or stones –
it seems to conceal what is not, and reveal what it is. This is the essence of Raquel Rabinovich's work. If you look deeply and spend time with the painting, then you will discover the text, which functions as a metaphor for what happens in the act of looking at a painting. The viewer has to go through the gateless gate to understand the painting. What counts in the painting is embedded in the painting itself. The meaning is inherent in the painting. When you think about what that means you are already entering the painting itself.
River Library is a series of drawings on handmade paper where the artist uses mud as her medium from rivers all over the world. The mud embodies the history of the Earth and human kind, it contains life, death and layers of deep accumulation.
The mud is the unwritten history of nature and culture that functions like a text that provides a memory of our existence.
November 2014
