Editioned Screenprints

2010

Rachel Foster

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Rachel E. Foster uses printmaking, sculpture, and photography to illuminate the nearly invisible. For her source material she combs the digital world for bits of strange information that seep into our daily reality. These clues, be they coded sequences or simple phrases, become part of her puzzle; by reframing information she makes us reconsider it through a different lens. Language is embedded in Foster’s work, but it is subject to play, often becoming obscured or reoriented. In Ghost I (2009) the word “ghost” becomes ghosted, rendered ominously in white chalk on black paper so that it resembles an apparition. Average Lifespan (2009) calculates the average lifespan of eight famous poets. This seemingly random equation reveals to us the age at which the poets died and forges a posthumous relationship among them.

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Rachel Foster is concerned with showing the unseen. Her prints and letterpress pieces humorously play with language, sight, and tactility. Ghost I and Ghost II work as a pair to conjure reflection and its “haunting” quality. Other prints, such as Dyslexia, deploy similar letters of the alphabet—b, d, q, p—to create a different kind of confusion and disorientation. In This is print, embossed Braille dots communicate: “This print is depicting another way a single idea can be communicated.” Through the use of very simple mechanisms, humor, and tautology, Foster pushes our understanding of the relationship between signs, senses, meanings, and readings.

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Colors:

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• communication.n.01
• code.v.02
• imperceptible.a.01
• language.n.01
• information.n.02
• invisible.a.01