Celeste Rapone (b. 1985, New Jersey) is known for her narrative paintings that blur the Imbued with autobiographical details, art historical references, and the artifacts of daily life, the paintings of Celeste Rapone (b. 1985; New Jersey) embody the anxiety and longing inherent to the millennial condition. In uncannily flattened interiors— surrounded by the detritus of living—Rapone’s figures contort impossibly within their spaces; their limbs push against the frame, threatening to burst through the picture plane as Rapone tests the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. Rapone’s formalist concerns—surface, pattern, and color—are evident in the insistent flatness of her images, as spaces collapse and figures are pushed to the foreground, threatening to spill out toward the viewer. Frequently in the midst of action—working, reading, cooking—Rapone’s figures offer suggestions of narrative while emphasizing the very act of being observed.
