Fatman with Edith and Tilano, 1993
Fatman with Edith and Tilano, 1993
27-1/2x32 inches




Forest, from Trees at Sea, 2000-01
Forest, from Trees at Sea, 2000-01
12x44 inches glass
12x65x8 inches boat




Dave's Dream, 1980
Dave's Dream, 1980
20x24 inches




 Meridel Rubenstein: Belonging: Selected Works

Meridel Rubenstein opens an exhibition of selected works at Brian Gross Fine Art on Thursday, March 24, with a reception for the artist from 5:30-7:30pm. This exhibition highlights the breadth and depth of Rubenstein's innovative photo-based work over the past twenty-five years.

In her fourth exhibition at Brian Gross Fine Art, Meridel Rubenstein will install selected images from five distinct, yet interrelated projects: Low Riders (1980-81), An Extended Landscape (1981-85), Critical Mass (1989-93), Millennial Forest (2000-01), and Trees at Sea (1999-2004). Throughout her career, Rubenstein has explored political, mythical, historical, and spiritual themes in photography and mixed media. Rubenstein's ongoing dialogue with Belonging — where and to whom one belongs — is articulated in her haunting imagery and disparate materials.

Always a technical innovator in photographic imagery, Rubenstein's media includes multi-print photo collages mounted on shaped metal frames, photo transfers on glass, mixed media sculptures, and digital prints on vellum and mica-coated tree bark paper in addition to the more traditional palladium and cibachrome prints.

In 2004, a major monograph by Meridel Rubenstein entitled Belonging: Los Alamos to Vietnam, Photoworks and Installations, was published by St. Ann's Press, Los Angeles. The 192-page book is organized into eight projects with 140 masterfully produced plates and important contributions from James Crump, Lucy R. Lippard, Elaine Scarry, Rebecca Solnit, and Terry Tempest Williams. The book and a limited edition with a signed and numbered print of Millennial Forest will be available from the gallery.

Rubenstein was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1948. She received an MA and MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Currently, she is the Harnish Visiting Artist at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work has been the focus of numerous gallery and museum exhibitions throughout the United States including Site Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, the List Center for Visual Arts, MIT, Boston, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. She currently maintains studios in New Mexico and Vermont.