Squeak Carnwath — If Not Now When

October 1st — November 5th, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturady, October 1st, from Noon - 6pm

RUSCHMAN
4148 N. Elston Ave., Chicago, IL 60618

RUSCHMAN is very pleased to announce If Not Now When, a solo exhibition of paintings by Oakland-based painter, Squeak Carnwath. This exhibition, the first solo exhibition of the artist's with the gallery, will feature brand new paintings made over the past year, alongside a selection of never-before-exhibited works from the preceding decade. Droplets of powder pink, spills of outrage, lemonade sloshes, and checkered fields marking out a workaday commitment to depicting emotional, psychological, and political climates without repression: welcome to the complexities and alkyd-slick clutter by which Squeak Carnwath forces the internal into externality. Consummate polyglot, Carnwath has for years busied herself with the conceptual hopscotch of both looking and reading within the scope of painting. Shifts in speech acts and code switches are amassed in her well versed referentiality: painted in creamy, craggy, sumptuous, and illusory layers are spry nods to Rauschenberg’s combines, Twombly’s verbosity, Schapiro’s fierce insistence on the political efficacy of foofaraw, not to mention Carnwath’s own collection of idiosyncratic emoji, rote signals of civilization descending into widespread crisis, philosophical metonyms, and disarmingly present, up-to-the-moment anxious annotations. Constellatory and consolatory, Carnwath arrays drawn-in-paint thought bubbles sagging saturated with affect, loose leaf trompe l’oeils, and a use of text that has in recent years swollen from diaristic scribbles to also present as residual word jumbles redolent of ad hoc protests in the streets. While various gestures take on the tones of introspection, journalism, activism, and poetics, each rectangular panel confronted in total is an eloquent chatterbox, diagrammatic in its attentiveness to discursive terms, debate teams collapsed in on themselves, stacked into the most elegant compound sentences, hopeful for a form of collective pursuit of justice and a matrix of visual coding to accompany.

It’s been barely a century since literary and artistic circles reluctantly widened to include women within a recognized creative class, and even that position is consistently beleaguered. More broadly, no acknowledgement of the interior psychological lives of women and femme-identified denizens are achieved without persistent, insistent embattlement. One need look no further than these most recent preceding months of summer for sobering reminders of the sound and fury with which the establishment can and certainly will attack women’s tenuous autonomy at the level of legislation and a parallel social code of public life. It is at this pitch that Carnwath’s work proves to be more town crier than timid memoirist. In her mapping of contested (gendered) positions, national panic, cartoon catastrophes, tenderly illustrated insignia, and written prompts, these works are proposals for painting as a social environment.

Think of Mary Heilmann’s paintings-and-rolling-chairs-as-conversation-starters installations as close range points of comparison for the ways Carnwath’s work invites dialogue inside, outside, around, and onto the work. Arm in arm with her sister-defenders, Carnwath’s pictorial fields bring together the sense of urgency and violence in the works of Nancy Spero with the vertiginous, mismatched patchwork of cultural signage that accumulates in Nancy Shaver’s practice: Carnwath strikes out in a direction that works through the exigencies of her day and age with a luscious handling of lively, variegated surfaces. And as with the most foundational approaches to (feminist) consciousness raising, Carnwath’s consistent refusal to mince words means that her paintings react to the triumphs and horrors of election cycles in real time, that she will record into the form of painting our societal shames and redemption, and that hers is a keen, literate reservoir where present day mayhem finds counterpoints in Carnwath’s recall of art history and longer annals of time, mythology and antiquity. The rhythmic arithmetic of this work demonstrates a method of the additive that can appropriately reason with a world of compounded pandemics and dizzying, inordinate numbers of disasters. In the reading of Carnwath’s writings and surrounding surfaces, one finds a riddlesome rebus almost prophetic in its vigilant attention to the stakes of the now. Squeak Carnwath (b. 1947, Abington, PA) has been an artist since age six, and an educator since receiving her Master of Fine Arts degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1977. She has received numerous awards including the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, two individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award for Individual Artists from the Flintridge Foundation, and the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In 2019 she was inducted into the National Academy of Design and Art. Her work is included in prominent collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, the Rene and Veronica di Rosa Collection, San Francisco Fine Art Museums, and Yale University Art Gallery, to new only a few.

Install

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Install

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

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Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

If Not Now When

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, 2020, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 50h x 50w in.

If Not Now When

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, 2020, Detail View

If Not Now When

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, 2020, Detail View

If Not Now When

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, 2020, Detail View

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Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Install

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Lost Touch

Squeak Carnwath, Lost Touch, 2022, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 55h x 55w in.

Lost Touch

Squeak Carnwath, Lost Touch, 2022, Detail View

Lost Touch

Squeak Carnwath, Lost Touch, 2022, Detail View

Lost Touch

Squeak Carnwath, Lost Touch, 2022, Detail View

Lost Touch

Squeak Carnwath, Lost Touch, 2022, Detail View

Pleasure

Squeak Carnwath, Pleasure, 2022, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 55h x 55w in.

Pleasure

Squeak Carnwath, Pleasure, 2022, Detail View

Pleasure

Squeak Carnwath, Pleasure, 2022, Detail View

Pleasure

Squeak Carnwath, Pleasure, 2022, Detail View

Pleasure

Squeak Carnwath, Pleasure, 2022, Detail View

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Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Install

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Freedom From Freedom To

Squeak Carnwath, Freedom From Freedom To, 2018, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 70h x 70w in.

Freedom From Freedom To

Squeak Carnwath, Freedom From Freedom To, 2018, Angled View

Freedom From Freedom To

Squeak Carnwath, Freedom From Freedom To, 2018, Detail View

Freedom From Freedom To

Squeak Carnwath, Freedom From Freedom To, 2018, Detail View

Freedom From Freedom To

Squeak Carnwath, Freedom From Freedom To, 2018, Detail View

Freedom From Freedom To

Squeak Carnwath, Freedom From Freedom To, 2018, Detail View

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Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Install

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Pattern Chatter

Squeak Carnwath, Pattern Chatter, 2022, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 36h x 36w in.

Pattern Chatter

Squeak Carnwath, Pattern Chatter, 2022, Angled View

Pattern Chatter

Squeak Carnwath, Pattern Chatter, 2022, Detail View

Pattern Chatter

Squeak Carnwath, Pattern Chatter, 2022, Detail View

Pattern Chatter

Squeak Carnwath, Pattern Chatter, 2022, Detail View

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Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Believe

Squeak Carnwath, Believe, 2018, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 70h x 70w in.

Believe

Squeak Carnwath, Believe, 2018, Angled View

Believe

Squeak Carnwath, Believe, 2018, Detail View

Believe

Squeak Carnwath, Believe, 2018, Detail View

Believe

Squeak Carnwath, Believe, 2018, Detail View

Believe

Squeak Carnwath, Believe, 2018, Detail View

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Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Install

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Just Noticeable Difference

Squeak Carnwath, Just Noticeable Difference, 2022, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 50h x 50w in.

Just Noticeable Difference

Squeak Carnwath, Just Noticeable Difference, 2022, Detail View

Just Noticeable Difference

Squeak Carnwath, Just Noticeable Difference, 2022, Detail View

Just Noticeable Difference

Squeak Carnwath, Just Noticeable Difference, 2022, Detail View

Words Fail

Squeak Carnwath, Words Fail, 2022, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 36h x 36w in.

Words Fail

Squeak Carnwath, Words Fail, 2022, Angled View

Words Fail

Squeak Carnwath, Words Fail, 2022, Detail View

Words Fail

Squeak Carnwath, Words Fail, 2022, Detail View

Words Fail

Squeak Carnwath, Words Fail, 2022, Detail View

Install

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Squeak Carnwath, No, 2020, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 36h x 36w in.

Squeak Carnwath, No, 2020, Angled View

Squeak Carnwath, No, 2020, Detail View

Squeak Carnwath, No, 2020, Detail View

Squeak Carnwath, No, 2020, Detail View

Install

Squeak Carnwath, If Not Now When, Installation View

Pants on Fire 50

Squeak Carnwath, Pants on Fire 50, 2017, Oil and alkyd on canvas, 8h x 8w in.

Pants on Fire 1

Squeak Carnwath, Pants on Fire 1, 2017, Oil and alkyd on canvas, 10h x 10w in.

Pants on Fire 44

Squeak Carnwath, Pants on Fire 44, 2017, Oil and alkyd on canvas, 10h x 8w in.

Pants on Fire 69

Squeak Carnwath, Pants on Fire 69, 2017, Oil and alkyd on canvas, 10h x 10w in.

Pants on Fire 37

Squeak Carnwath, Pants on Fire 37, 2017, Oil and alkyd on clayboard, 12h x 12w in.