A R E A is pleased to present Laine Rettmer’s second solo exhibition: Abundance. The exhibition is part of a series of three explorations that started with White Rush, the artist’s first solo show at the gallery. The series addresses the eroticization of sexual violence in Western classical art and mythology.

This body of work assumes the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter as a means to examine questions of power, visibility, trauma, reciprocal care, memory, and historical permanence. Rettmer foregrounds the exhibition with a single-channel video work, set in sites of American post-prosperity: a grain terminal, an abandoned highway, a love hotel. The video re-tells the classical narrative of the Rape of Persephone, starting with Persephone’s escape from Hades, the underworld, and examining the subsequent time of healing with her mother, Demeter.

The work meditates on the construction of myth and interrogates the cyclical structures of trauma that are foundational to Western culture and art. Related works include video sculptures fabricated from 3D printed plastics, jailbroken monitors, a seven-foot-tall wood cut-out in the shape of Bernini’s Rape of Persephone. A series of nine photographs, titled April through December, use macro photography in a painterly investigation of staged, decaying pomegranates, the fruit which Persephone ate while in Hades.

About the artist:

Laine Rettmer is a time-based artist who works primarily in video and opera. Her visual art has been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum, Manifesta, the Museum of Fine Art Boston, the Yuan Art Museum, and NADA NY, NADA Presents, among others. Recent awards include a MAP Fund grant for the collaborative opera Standby Snow: Chronicle of a Heat Wave and a Research Fellowship from the Center for Arts Design and Social Research. Rettmer teaches media and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and has served as Residential Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.