The Charles Harris Library Gallery is pleased to present recent work by artist Claire Rau. The three series on view rely on her keen historical sensibility and mordant sense of humor. Her Campagne series uses appropriated imagery from a 1960’s Middle School textbook dealing with religious and territorial wars of the Middle Ages. The prints, which brightly catalog battles and conquests of the Crusades, are incongruously backed by lace patterns, creating an hybrid narrative through ornamentation and color.

Rau’s Weapons series of soft sculptures reflect her interest in hand-to-hand combat and are meant to subvert ideals of virility and skill on the battlefield. The floppy, pliable forms are an unexpectedly wry twist on items otherwise intended to injure, maim, and kill. One is left to consider the fundamental absurdity behind paraphernalia of defense and destruction.  

The silkscreen prints of Rau's Booby Print series are connected to her series of booby trap sculptures. Inspired by the Hollywood jungle action movie Predator, these works are meant to represent antipersonnel devices. However, because of their ominous forms or intense colors, they become ridiculous cartoon-like menaces. The prints deal with issues of sacrifice, destruction, domestic violence, and warmongering. Several were made in response to her sculptural forms while others are more metaphoric, weaving research and ideas with an immediacy not present in her sculptural practice.