Jessica Rath
Through carefully researched photography, sculpture, watercolor, and video, Jessica Rath’s artistic practice examines the points at which art and agriculture meet. Her cerebral investigations have included sculpting samples of rare and inedible strains of apples, sensually depicting genetically modified tomatoes, and installing an “inside-out” tree in a gallery.
In her series Take Me to the Apple Breeder, Rath took a largely unknown piece of scientific fact—that edible apples must be grafted from living trees, not planted by seed—and turned it into an exploration of form and color. But Rath’s project is not only aesthetic: by simply representing these forgotten fruits, she comments on the wealth of scientific information about our food that goes unsaid. For tree peel, Rath cast a yellow latex skin from a mangled, dying apricot tree; after turning the skin inside out, she then coated it on a metal sculpture with the tree’s same dimensions. Rath frequently walks this line through her work, challenging the viewer with powerful works that are equally driven by the industrial as by the natural.
Rath's work has appeared at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the FLAG Art Foundation in New York, the Otis College of Art and Design …
Through carefully researched photography, sculpture, watercolor, and video, Jessica Rath’s artistic practice examines the points at which art and agriculture meet. Her cerebral investigations have included sculpting samples of rare and inedible strains of apples, sensually depicting genetically modified tomatoes, and installing an “inside-out” tree in a gallery.
In her series Take Me to the Apple Breeder, Rath took a largely unknown piece of scientific fact—that edible apples must be grafted from living trees, not planted by seed—and turned it into an exploration of form and color. But Rath’s project is not only aesthetic: by simply representing these forgotten fruits, she comments on the wealth of scientific information about our food that goes unsaid. For tree peel, Rath cast a yellow latex skin from a mangled, dying apricot tree; after turning the skin inside out, she then coated it on a metal sculpture with the tree’s same dimensions. Rath frequently walks this line through her work, challenging the viewer with powerful works that are equally driven by the industrial as by the natural.
Rath's work has appeared at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the FLAG Art Foundation in New York, the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, the Torrance Art Museum, and the Boca Museum of Art in Boca Raton, among other institutions and galleries. She is the recipient of multiple fellowships and grants.
Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Los Angeles, CA
Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, NY
