The Pit is pleased to present Adrianne Rubenstein: I Love Worms. An opening reception will be held on September 9, 2018 from 4-7pm, and the exhibition will be on view through October 21, 2018.

In her second one-person exhibition at The Pit, Adrianne Rubenstein will debut a suite of new paintings, which are some of her largest to date. Working in oil on panel, Rubenstein uses vibrant colors, direct form, and confident brushwork to depict raw memory in paint. Her paintings tell stories from her life, referencing moments from the just past and from long ago. In them, she is just as much a part of the subject matter as whatever it is she is painting, taking steadfast responsibility for her role as narrator. This vulnerability and resistance to neutrality allows Rubenstein to claim nostalgia not as an indulgence but as a powerful lens through which to view her place in and experience of the world.

Rubenstein is equally comfortable referencing art history and art’s current moment as she is her catalogue of personal memories. While works like Abstract Painting are a response to present-day trends in contemporary art and her faceted position within her community as a painter, gallery director, and curator, works such as Ladder with Ribbons—an homage to Ree Morton, whose work has been an influence on Rubenstein—refer to art history and her formation as an artist. In her dreamlike yet vivid compositions, Rubenstein’s explorations of memory and musings on art emerge as markers of a practice rooted in feminism: the personal is political.  

Adrianne Rubenstein was born in Montréal, Canada in 1983 and lives in New York, NY. She received a Master of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA in 2011 and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada in 2006. One-person exhibitions of her work have been presented at venues such as Reyes Projects, Bloomfield Hills, MI (2017); Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, OR (2017); White Columns, New York, NY (2016); and David Petersen, Minneapolis, MI (2016). Rubenstein’s paintings have been featured in thematic and two-person exhibitions including Out of Control, curated by Sally and Peter Saul, Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY (2018); Permanent Embrace, with Walter Robinson, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2018); Say Yes, curated by Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI (2017); Feed the Meter I & II, Ceyson & Benetiere, Luxembourg (2015 & 2017); and Bunnicula, with Jennifer Sullivan, Marvin Gardens, New York, NY (2016). Rubenstein is an active participant in the international community of artist-run spaces and artist-driven curatorial initiatives, and she was awarded the Emerging Artist Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in 2016.