Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington Presents Rebecca Rivas-Rogers Grey View

Reception: Saturday, February 25 from 5pm to 8pm

MoCAA Arlington is pleased to present “Grey View,” the first solo exhibition by resident artist Rebecca Rivas-Rogers. “Grey View” is an exuberant love letter to the color gray, a record of the abstractions, colors and textures found in America’s constructed spaces and a snapshot of the artist’s creative process. Consisting of photographs, collage and a sprawling site-specific installation, “Grey View” is an outgrowth of Rivas-Rogers’ ongoing aesthetic investigations into places that you see on your way to somewhere else.

Initially a landscape painter, Rebecca Rivas Rogers work is indebted to the history of painting and her training in graphic design. As a Northern Irish woman living in the United States, Rivas-Rogers brings an outsider’s perspective to the provisional spaces that dominate the contemporary American landscape: through Rivas-Rogers’ eyes, parking lots, construction zones, chain link fencing and oil stains all become lessons in aesthetics and meditations on the color gray. Rivas-Rogers’ observations of these and other American “non-spaces” are recorded in a series of small format photographs on the wall opposite her site-specific installation, showcasing her focus on pattern, texture, abstraction and color.

Rivas-Rogers’ installation, meanwhile, eschews conventions of tidiness and perfection, allowing the mess of the artist’s studio to spill out into the gallery. A playful re-imagining of stuff generated throughout the creative process — used paint sticks, empty coffee cups, cardboard boxes and dry wall tape — the “Grey View” installation possesses its own internal aesthetic and organizational logic. Through it, Rivas-Rogers allows audiences to further investigate the idiosyncratic charm and beauty inherent in the things we encounter in daily life.

Could the places that we pass through en route to a grander destination in fact be the main attraction? Can audiences be let into the messy creative process as participants rather than as consumers of a neat, finished product? Rivas-Rogers investigates these ideas and more in “Grey View,” offering gallery-goers a peek into her thinking mind.

BIO

Rebecca Rivas-Rogers is an artist, designer and educator originally from Northern Ireland. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and a BA in Design from Glasgow School of Art. After working in graphic design throughout Britain and the United States Rivas-Rogers became an art educator while living in Colombia, South America. Currently an adjunct professor at MICA and American University, she has been a resident artist at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Arlington since 2020.

Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington is located at 3550 Wilson Blvd Arlington, VA 22201 | visit mocaarlington.org/  |  (703) 248-6800