SITE Santa Fe is thrilled to present Rebecca Ward: distance to venus, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist, Rebecca Ward. Employing banded, sewn, and deconstructed canvases, Ward’s work explores the line between painting and sculpture. Her work emphasizes materiality and process, as she unravels and reassembles canvas to expose underlying stretcher bars, revealing the multidimensional physical structure of the painting itself.

distance to venus features a selection of recent works (2021-2022) tracing the transformative phases of pregnancy and childbirth through the language of geometry, materiality and abstraction. Expanding upon her previous vernacular of hard angles and straight lines, Ward’s new paintings employ curves which evoke an idealized female form. As a queer person experiencing motherhood, the artist implies a separation from the archetype of the female goddess, positioning a changing body in relationship to landscape, mathematics, and celestial phenomena.

Venus, at its nearest distance to Earth, is some 38 million miles away. Navigating her 38th rotation around the sun, Ward documents this rite of passage by transcribing the immeasurable into abstract minimalist forms. The exhibition coincides with the release of a monograph entitled before & after, which includes a conversation with curator Brandee Caoba.

Rebecca Ward (b. 1984, Waco, TX) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a BA at the University of Texas, Austin (2006) and an MFA at the School of the Visual Arts, New York (2012). Museum exhibitions include Fresh Faces from the Rachofsky Collection, Site 131, Dallas, TX (2021); Over & Over, Columbia College, Chicago, IL (2018); Rebecca Ward, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2017); Eastwing Biennial: Artificial Realities, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK (2016); Making & Unmaking, Camden Art Centre, London, UK (2016); The Tim Sayer Bequest, The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK (2016); Space Between, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2015); Linear Abstraction, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA (2015); and Rebecca Ward: indulgences, Exchiesetta, Polignano a Mare, Italy (2015). Ward is the subject of a monograph of her exhibition at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2021). Residencies include Shandaken: Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY (2016); and Atelier Alighiero Boetti, Todi, Italy (2013).