ADRIANNE RUBENSTEIN + JENNIFER SULLIVAN: BUNNICULA
Bunnicula is a collaborative exhibition featuring new drawing, painting and sculpture by Jennifer Sullivan and Adrianne Rubenstein. The title Bunnicula is borrowed from a series of books for adolescents about a vampire rabbit that sucks the juice out of vegetables. Drawing upon the idea of a character that is deceptively sweet but has an underlying set of evil urges, Bunnicula explores the shadow-self through images of domesticated nature. Flora and fauna become vehicles for states of transformation and growth, fertilized by supernatural forces that may or may not happen in the night.
Breakthrough Salad, by Sullivan, which is built on the remnants of a failed beginning imagines a self-portrait of the artist as a salad with a fist bursting out of its center. Like a fetus or a phoenix with something very important to say the figure announces itself as both an embellishment and a destructive force. Rubenstein’s sculptures based on Mollie Katzen’s recipe ‘The Enchanted Broccoli Forest’, depicts a casserole dish that contains a miniature canopy over rice. The relationship between food and emotion courses through an array of anthropomorphic vegetables evoking nostalgia and the alien qualities of every day life.
Fiercely feminine with surreal tendencies, Bunnicula makes a play for the kitchen as a site of subconscious matter. Produce can be either robust or flaccid, nutritious or compost, growth or decay. By dispiriting the vegetables and implanting them with other meaning Sullivan and Rubenstein seek to transform what we take for granted and reveal its supernatural capacity.
Jennifer Sullivan is a New York based interdisciplinary artist. Solo exhibitions include Revenge Body at Five Car Garage, Los Angeles; House Cat at Arts & Leisure, New York; and Big Girl Paintings at Five Car Garage, Los Angeles. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Papers, and Artforum.
Adrianne Rubenstein is a New York based artist, curator and gallery director. Recent exhibitions include Peaceful Alien at The Pit, Los Angeles and a White Room exhibition at White Columns, New York. Curatorial projects include Fort Greene at Venus, Los Angeles (currently on view through October 29th) and Maraschino at Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland. Her work has been reviewed by the New York Times and W Magazine.
