Rachel Heibel, installation view of “Visitors,” 2024, at Ackerman Clarke gallery/Photo: Ackerman Clarke gallery
Rachel Heibel is one of those rare talents in the art world, coming out of the gate fully formed. Fresh off of completing her master’s degree in fine arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Heibel opens her solo exhibition “Visitors,” marking her debut at Ackerman Clarke and placing her rightly among the gallery’s established roster of dynamically investigatory talents including William J. O’Brien, Hidetaka Suzuki and Vincent Haynes.
The first work encountered in “Visitors” is “Shelf, Nest, Pommel,” a wall-mounted work in the shape of a font in glazed stoneware and maple, punctuated smartly by copper hardware. Mounted sweetly on the wall adjacent to a doorway and the dormer that reaches up to the space’s bright white tin ceiling, it lends with immediacy a holy and vestibular feeling that persists throughout the entirety of the show.
Rachel Heibel, “Shelf, Nest, Pommel,” 2024, glazed stoneware, glazed porcelain, maple, copper hardware, 25″ H x 12 1/8″ W x 10″ D/Photo: Ackerman Clarke gallery
A suite of large ceramic works occupy the central space of the gallery, as peculiar in form as they are in finish. “Purple Chair,” with its explicit suggestion of furniture, pulls toward the domestic, while “Wobble Stool” feels more akin to athletic equipment, as do the nearby infrastructural “Pommel (Straddling)” and “Pommel (Building and Rebuilding).” The lattermost work serves as a linchpin to the exhibition. Its visibly vacuous hollow and hand-built form openly challenges the sturdiness of its exhibition mates, while the beeswax that coats its exterior thwarts any initial inclination one has toward its perceived approachability.
On a nearby wall hangs “Raindrop Game,” a glazed stoneware work that again makes use of beeswax, though this time in a more inviting manner. The only work that transgresses the suggestion of the action of the body in favor of the suggestion of the body itself, it holds a suggestively breast-like form that lends a surprising warmth to an exhibition that, despite the visibility of Heibel’s hand in most of the work, might otherwise feel slightly sterile.
Rachel Heibel, “Raindrop Game,” 2024, glazed stoneware, beeswax, 7 3/4″ H x 7 3/4″ W x 2 1/8″ D/Photo: Ackerman Clarke gallery
The most obtuse moment in the exhibition occurs in the interplay between two works, “Mama Bird,” a low-fired stoneware and terra sigillata wall-mounted work that takes the form of a functional lamp (its cord slumping visibly around a corner to the nearest outlet in a beautifully careless manner), and “Podium,” which sits at its feet serving some inscrutable purpose. Its tray table top, mounted on a vertically oriented closet rod, seems far too precarious to be pressed into service, and the beeswax-coated hemp strings that adorn it feel born of ritual; a neat carrying through of the first holy impulse encountered at the entry of the show.
It is Heibel’s self-assuredness that carries “Visitors,” her laconic sleight-of-hand that balances the gravity of the materials she employs with the humanity she instills in them. As opening salvos go, it is an exceptionally strong one, cementing a strong career that is certain to follow.
“Visitors” by Rachel Heibel is on view at Ackerman Clarke gallery, 2544 West Fullerton, through August 3.
