In the uncannily off-kilter paintings in Rachel Simon Marino’s inaugural solo exhibition at San Francisco’s Berggruen Gallery Running on Air (through April 30), pearl necklaces break, spilled wine flies through the air, doors lead to doors that lead to windows. Her work seems both totally original and familiar at the same time.
Marino wants viewers to feel inundated by these paintings. In fact, she felt a little surprised by how her large paintings in Day Glo colors looked smaller in the airy gallery, with its white walls and high ceilings, than they did in her crowded Bayview studio full of paints and tables.
“With the painting that was next to the stairs, the ‘large pants painting’ [Trouble], I wanted you to be able to stand under it and look up at the person and feel overwhelmed. And I wanted the painting of the car crash [Ooooh Mama!] to sort of feel like it’s coming at you and it’s going to hit you,” she said. “It felt a lot more claustrophobic while I was painting it. And that feeling of claustrophobia and actual danger, like the painting might fall on you, is important to me.”
Marino has described the world of her paintings as the moment when someone has run off a cliff—but hasn’t fallen yet. The outcome could be positive or negative. She doesn’t have any faces in her work, goading viewers to put themselves in the action.
“I think of each painting as a story that has developed enough where you know something is afoot and something about to happen,” she said. “You can look at my paintings, and I hope whatever’s going on in your life, you feel that when you look at the painting, that’s what you’re feeling in the painting. Obviously, that’s what happens when you look at art. You put yourself in it.”
Marino used to draw a lot, and she loved Old Masters and Renaissance works. She made pieces in those veins, that were “dark and gloomy” and mostly black and brown, she says. But after a while she changed to the bright colors that have become her hallmark.
“I’m not sure when, just sort of the switch happened, where I realized I could make this same painting, but make it bright and colorful, and that would make it maybe a little funnier,” she said. “I think that the color sort of acts as a Trojan horse. You look at it from afar, and it’s this big, beautiful, bright painting. You get closer, and obviously it’s not a fairy tale.”
A former set designer and sculptor, Marino has always loved to build and make things. Before she starts painting, she has a process of first drawing, then building miniature sets, and taking photographs of a model in costumes. This preparation helps her capture light and shadow. In Ooooh Mama! she asked a friend to model for her so she would have a better understanding of how to paint the woman’s dress.
“I found this crazy old prom dress and had her falling off this chair and trying to throw the dress up to get the shadows and the movement of the dress,” she said. “Then I was able to get that little fold at the top of the dress and that little fold at the bottom, and the way something curves that I wouldn’t have thought of, because I don’t know what a dress looks like when it’s falling through the air.”
In second grade, Marino started getting terrible migraines. Sometimes, she would lose touch with her body and surroundings. For years, doctors chalked this up to an overactive imagination. Then a neurologist diagnosed her with having a rare condition, Alice in Wonderland syndrome which disrupts the brain’s ability to process input. Having someone believe her and give her a diagnosis was a relief.
Now, Marino realizes she has been creating that uneasy world in her paintings. It wasn’t something she set out to do, she says, but the work imitates the feeling she had with migraines that something isn’t quite right.
Marino, who grew up in San Francisco and still lives here, has been part of group shows around the country, including at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, Rena Bransten Projects in Chicago, and the Guerrero Gallery in Oakland. In 2019, she had a solo show at Hit Gallery in San Francisco, What a Treat, and in 2022, a solo show called Foul Play at Venus over Manhattan in New York. This exhibition feels like a big deal, she says.
“Berggruen is an amazing gallery,” she said. “I try to hold out for shows that I’m really excited about, and I was really, really excited about this one. And I think it turned out OK. But a painting’s never done, and I always want to fix it. Even during the opening.”
RUNNING ON AIR Through April 30 at Berggruen Gallery, SF. More info here.
