Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1405904
and I just picked the ones that winked at me. That's how I curate." One standout in "Fresh Faces" is Italian artist Lauretta Vinciarelli (1943 – 2011). An architect who briefly taught at Rice University in the early 1980s, she has recently enjoyed a revival of her work. As a partner and collaborator with Donald Judd, Vinciarelli — who showed posthumously at the Judd Foundation in NYC in 2019 — designed an unrealized project in Marfa that influenced Judd's residence at The Block (now part of the Judd Foundation), as well as architectural elements of the Chinati Foundation. Vinciarelli was a brilliant watercolorist who used the medium in her later years to create luminous architectural studies. In two of these works featured in the exhibition, ethereal geometric forms appear to float in an imagined space. These are paintings by a mature artist and architect who has moved beyond the built environment to considerations of more metaphysical spaces. Subtle and glowing, they might be an idea of heaven itself. Other standouts are British painter Katy Moran and American artist Rebecca Ward. Moran, perhaps the best-known artist in the exhibition, is represented by two works on canvas dated 10 years apart. Both abstracts draw on the history of painting: The tightly balanced composition of Lucas (2007) suggests French academic or Italian landscape paintings; the muted grid of New Landscape (2017) recalls a street view of the Ashcan School. Rebecca Ward, originally from Waco, plays with the materiality of the raw canvas itself. She removes either the warp or weft from her large canvases, leaving transparent negative spaces that reveal the wooden support behind in quietly elegant, minimalist compositions. The sheer variety in "Fresh Faces," by artists who are not household names, reveals the Rachofskys' generosity of spirit and open-mindedness: These are not collectors who simply hunt trophies by famous artists. And, the collection continues to grow. "Fresh Faces from The Rachofsky Collection," at SITE131, September 18 – December 18; opening reception, Saturday, September 18, 5 to 8 pm; 131 Payne St., site131.com. Previous page: Lauretta Vinciarelli's Suspended in Green II, 1 of 2 and 2 of 2, 2005. Below, clockwise from top: Katy Moran's Lucas, 2007. Markus Amm's Untitled, 2017. Rebecca Ward's intimacy, 2016. All images courtesy The Rachofsky Collection. Cindy and Howard Rachofsky KEVIN TODORA 64