RARE is pleased to announce the opening of Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams, an exhibition of new paintings by Nathan Ritterpusch. Running from October 11 through November 8, this is the artist’s third solo show with the gallery and the first installment in his ongoing narrative series, The Brunette, The Blonde, and Their Mistress.

The show’s title is taken from Lou Reed’s song of the same name as performed by Nico on her 1967 debut album Chelsea Girl. The refrain, “Wrap your troubles in dreams, send them all away . . . put them in a bottle and across the seas they’ll stay,” operates as the haunting and troublesome mantra employed by the song’s ill-equipped protagonist. This strategy of denial, whether developed during the trusting innocence of childhood or deployed as a tactic of adult disengagement, relates closely to Ritterpusch’s current output.

Viewed through a cinematic lens, Ritterpusch’s paintings behave as disjointed and isolated scenes, each containing its own particular fiction while contributing to the greater plan as a whole. Oscillating between oppositional situations (night/day, interior/exterior truth, youth/maturity), the works explore the shifting realities and psychic traumas of their principal characters.

While allowing atmosphere and mood to serve as unifying elements, the paintings follow their own internal semi-logic. Lavish details subtly emerge from the recesses of delicately modulated pigment to reveal private moments of introspection and vulnerability. Carefully choreographed, these tableaus are enriched through a pensive and contemplative palette punctuated by selective bursts of color and light. Providing ample room for interpretation, they reveal themselves slowly, often posing as many questions as they do answers.

Recent solo exhibitions by the artist include I Thought I Was Someone Else, Galerie Burkhard Eikelmann, Dusseldorf, Germany (2011); Ask Me about My Grandchildren, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (2010); and De-li-rium, RARE Gallery, New York (2009). Artist residencies include Dada Post, Berlin, Germany (2011); Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE (2010); and Futura Projekts, Prague, Czech Republic (2008). Nathan Ritterpusch lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.