Dylan Rose Rheingold

May 22, 2024

Dylan Rose Rheingold (b.1997, New York) is a painter based in New York, NY. Rheingold received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2022, and her BFA from Syracuse University in 2019. Her paintings have been featured in exhibitions at M+B, Los Angeles, California; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; T293, Rome, Italy; The Historic Hampton House Museum of Art & Culture, Miami, Florida; Rusha & Co., Los Angeles, California; Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles, California; Latitude Gallery, New York, New York; Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York, New York; China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China; Backhaus Projects, Berlin, Germany; London Paint Club, London, United Kingdom; amongst others. Rheingold lives and works in New York.

Can you tell us about your practice?

My practice is heavily influenced by the concept of identity as it explores girlhood, memory, and nostalgia within the American contemporary culture. Building a bridge between abstract figuration and surrealism, I create dreamscape-like paintings that act as outlets of self-reflection within the walls of the coming-of-age female experience. I explore mundane moments and domesticity within our private lives while reflecting on intimacy and otherness through a feminine lens.

You mentioned drawing inspiration frequently from familial history. How do you manage to incorporate this influence into your practice without allowing it to constrain you?

The little ways in which I incorporate my familial history come very natural to me and feel inherently intuitive within my process. Although these inspirations are not always the most obvious, details alluding to the mixture of traditional vs untraditional materials on canvas, my layering process, and subtle moments of symbolism, are all integral parts of my approach to creating these picture planes. As the eldest daughter of a first-generation Japanese American mother and a Jewish-American father, there are many subtle hints and references to my patrimonial duality. These subtle details are equally blended with surrealist notions and abstraction. In some sense, the works feel like portals, transporting you into distant memories or dreamscapes, equally nostalgic and unknown.

When I started my MFA, I had just finished creating this family archive I had been pulling over the years with photos and documentation from both sides of my family. Pretty soon after I started creating these collages, I realized that what I was gravitating towards wasn’t the direct portrayals/ portraiture of these figures, but the otherness I found once combining such contrasting cultures, environments, and upbringings from both sides of my family.

While the concept of girlhood holds significant importance in your experiences, you’ve recently begun exploring this theme from various perspectives. Could you elaborate on your thought process behind this expansion?

As I age and grow, it feels only natural that my work evolves in a similar manner. During my MFA, my thesis was an investigation of girlhood within the American contemporary culture. Since graduate school, I have continued this investigation but my experiences and personal explorations have started to shape shift. My thesis was a lot more focused on the idea of girlhood in regards to a young female POV teetering between the narratives of girl and woman. More recently my experiences have been gravitating more toward the idea of “self” in regards to adult life as a woman. Leaning into more of the honest experiences of what it often feels like to be a young woman, and pairing this role while referencing and alluding to younger childhood memories and experiences. I have also begun to start sharing a key part of my practice- the automatic drawings. Allowing the notions of surrealist automatism to enlarge and develop into paintings.

Drawing plays a pivotal role in your artistic journey. How has this aspect of your practice evolved, and what approach do you take when translating it into your paintings?

Drawing has always been the core of my practice as I have always fallen more into a linear than a painterly mode. With sketch-like immediacy, I draw with an oil stick over a fusion of acrylic paints/water-based washes like Sumi ink, high fluidity dyes as well as china markers and pastels. Regardless of the painting medium, I view these materials as tools for drawing. Through the course of layering, I am able to connect aspects of both time and history in my subject matter. As I mentioned, more recently my painting practice has evolved into letting this intuitive drawing base translate freely onto the canvases.

You often use diverse and unconventional materials in your paintings. How do you cultivate a highly generative process within your practice?

As my works are constantly in dialogue with one another and truly affect each other in a narrative that isn’t linear, I tend to work on a few paintings at a time. This allows me to be intuitive and curious with the dialogue of my narrative, and the development of the work. I always like to work in the mindset of a series (even if my studio is empty, or if the same series goes on and on and continues to develop over many moons). I am always thinking about my paintings in conversation with one another and how these ideas co-exist, respond, and interact with one another. This opens up a new way for a dialogue, or an argument, between the unique object and the contingent object. In some sense, finding a balance between autonomy and contingency.

You’ve mentioned being inspired by numerous folk and outsider artists. Could you delve a bit deeper into how their work influences or inspires your own?

What has always interested me about outsider artists is their commitment to the artistry of genuine storytelling. They push barriers and turn limitations into beauty in an incredibly resourceful way. To me, real artists are those who can not live or function in their day-to-day lives without creating and will find any means to create.

Dylan Rose Rheingold

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