Marta Riniker-Radich. Every home a fortress every hearth a blossom

About

For her first US solo exhibition, Riniker-Radich focuses on rural anti-government organizations that have flourished in the U.S. in recent years. Comprised of drawings, sculptures, and architectural interventions, the exhibition highlights the contradictory desires and fears underpinning such movements.

Riniker-Radich, who is best known for her luminescent pencil drawings, has here created a new series depicting allegorical environments of care and control. The soft-hued images feature marbled eggs and intricately decorated cupcakes, handcrafted goods associated with rituals of domesticity. These delicate objects are confined within severe architectures designed to isolate and protect, in a military palette of greens and grays.

To create a sense of privacy, the artist has placed filters on the windows and skylight of the gallery and fabricated customized resin earplugs in visceral shades of pink and deep red. The thoughts mold the brain, as certainly as the brain molds the thoughts (2015) are a set of handmade whips, or carpet beaters, suggesting certain obsessive and aggressive aspects of cleanliness.

Hinting at a survivalist spirit, rudimentary water filtration systems drip water into buckets throughout the gallery. Meanwhile, a screen displays online testimonials from individuals, who have registered with a militia website, responding to receiving their first supply package in the mail.