Rebecca Kaufman’s practice is in the event of seeing. She constructs disrupted optical field paintings with labor-intensive repetitive processes that imply movement where there is none, engaging visceral, sometimes non-consensual viewing experiences. Unlike the op artists of the sixties, Kaufman’s paintings are irreverent and rife with error, indicating rather than denying the human hand.
Utilizing the ancient technology of painting, she reflects on the realities of trauma under the veil of denial in the form of a highly polished exterior. Undulations, bleeds, and disturbances permeate paintings that reference orderly and familiar textile patterns and early computer graphics. The paintings signal a vaporwave aesthetic steeped in the emptiness of domestic and consumer idealism.