LIFELINE

RACHEL RUBENSTEIN

Opening Reception: October 9, 2026, 6:00-8:00pm

October 9 – November 7, 2026

KALINER is thrilled to present Rachel Rubenstein’s second solo exhibition with KALINER, “Lifeline”. The exhibition features Rubenstein’s new paintings that explore presence, transformation, and reflect her personal emotional and spiritual journey. Developed through an extended engagement with material process, the new series examine the ways uncertainty, vulnerability, and resilience can be registered through the surface of a painting.

Developed alongside a sustained practice of prayer, engagement with Scripture, time in nature, and contemplative attention, the paintings reflect an understanding of transformation as a process of remaining present rather than seeking escape. Rubenstein’s paintings have become an extension of her spiritual practice. Lifeline exhibition is the result of learning that transformation doesn't come through escape. It comes through remaining present long enough to be changed.

The painting begins by pouring fluid acrylic onto gessoed canvas, subsequently adhering additional layers of canvas with gel medium before tearing them away. The process is both deliberate and unpredictable. Rubenstein surrenders control to the material, allowing chance, time, and intuition to determine what remains. The distressed surface of the canvas carries the memory of everything it has endured. The resulting surfaces retain evidence of their material history: exposed fibers, fragments of earlier layers, abrasions, and ruptures become integral elements of the composition. Rather than concealing the processes of alteration, the paintings make them visible.

The lines moving across the surface generate a restless, almost kinetic energy, reflecting the anxious thought patterns that shape the artist’s inner experience. In contrast, expansive fields of color introduce moments of stillness, presence, and grace. As the process unfolds, Rubenstein enters a state of sustained concentration in which conscious intention gives way to an intuitive engagement with the painting, approaching each work as a visual problem to be resolved through the act of making.

The resulting surfaces often resemble landscapes or aerial views, inspired by the Southern California terrain that has always shaped Rubenstein’s visual language. She uses reference photographs from hikes and walks in the garden, loosely referencing them for color palette ideas. But once she is creating the work, she is channeling an emotion more than a place. Over time, she has come to understand these works less as physical landscapes than as expressions of uncertainty, vulnerability, resilience, and the quiet transformation that occurs when one stays with an experience rather than escapes it.

The paintings in Lifeline are concerned with trust rather than perfection or repair. They are not illustrations of faith, but evidence of a life gradually being reoriented by it.

The exhibition is on view through November 7th.