Afterlight

The Change - 60 x 72 inches - oil on Canvas - 2025

Rachel MacFarlane

109 Norfolk Street

9 January - 21 February 2026

For more information about Afterlight, please contact us at info@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.

Press on the exhibition:

Rachel MacFarlane’s Mystical Spaces: Afterlight at Hollis Taggart Downtown by Taylor Bielecki

Artsy Editorial: 5 Artists on Our Radar in January 2026

@art — video feature

For press inquiries, please contact us at press@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.

Occurrence- 14 x 18 inches - Oil on Linen - 2026

Hollis Taggart Downtown is pleased to present Afterlight, Rachel MacFarlane’s second solo exhibition with Hollis Taggart since joining its roster in 2022. The paintings in this exhibition speak to new forms of exploration in the artist’s practice: the richly jewel-toned landscapes for which MacFarlane is known retain their speculative aura while incorporating formal and conceptual possibilities of sunlight, particularly after her research trip to Spain in 2024. The exhibition will be on view at Hollis Taggart Downtown from January 9 to February 21, 2026, with an opening reception on Friday, January 9, from 6 to 9pm.

Tongues of Fire - 60 x 48 inches - Oil on Canvas - 2025

Around the time she was embarking on this new body of work, MacFarlane began rekindling knowledge of wild plants through attending foraging workshops. As a result – although the landscapes of MacFarlane’s paintings are based only loosely on memories of specific places – most of the plants and flora in these new paintings are real and identifiable: hoary mountain mint that is common to Jamaica Bay, olive trees in Spain (where farmers told her that they cannot be grown naturally anymore due to increased sunlight from recent climate changes), poppies, dandelions, and morning glories, to name a few. The smaller works on paper capture events in the landscape or specific natural phenomena.

Vespertine Marsh - 36 x 27 inches - Oil on Linen - 2026 with wall

Oleaster at First Light - 36 x 27 inches - oil on linen - 2026

Inspired by visionary painters like William Blake, Charles Burchfield, and Hilma af Klint, MacFarlane’s new works retool biblical, revelatory imagery of the unknowable and the sublime – as they relate to climate and the weather – into imaginary landscapes that look both pre-historic as well as post-human or survivalist. These new works suggest that such landscapes may lie in the not-too-distant future, but at the same time look intensely speculative, as if straight out of a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin or Octavia Butler. MacFarlane’s landscapes might exist in the future in the aftermath of some cataclysmic event (as alluded to in the title of the show, Afterlight) but may not be accessible or viewable to any human.

Flood of Light - 36 x 27 inches - Oil on Linen - 2026

Solid Rain - 36 x 27 inches - Oil on Linen - 2025

MacFarlane’s works expand on the long-standing genre of landscape painting to account for current ecological pressure on natural spaces. Her works speak to our complicated relationship to the natural world, in light of climate crises and the proliferation of digital, simulated landscapes that act as a form of surrogate landscapes. To begin her studio process, MacFarlane constructs paper maquettes within small, shallow boxes to initiate each painting. These maquettes function almost as scientific experiments, as the artist plays with different light colors and shadows. The paintings then evolve into speculative fiction, illustrating the changing landscape or envisioning its potential future – one taken over by flora, fabricated and rebuilt, and full of unknown phenomena. New ideas for works are often triggered by expeditions to different sites; MacFarlane chooses places purposefully based on their ecologies to get a pulse on various kinds of current environmental changes.