Mending is an immersive installation by California-based artist Rachel Deane, opening at AUTOMAT on Friday, August 10th. Deane will transform the space using her signature labor-intensive, layered approach to storytelling.

Mending takes an honest, straightforward look at contemporary dating culture, and acts as a monument to personal experiences, both positive and traumatic. Rooted in literary references including Hamlet’s Ophelia and Faust’s Aricia, this idea was originally manifest as a short story written by Deane, and then evolved to material form, and now contains dozens of objects, drawings, structures, and spaces.

In this immersive work, Rachel Deane offers a stylized glimpse inside the interior world of contemporary sexual negotiations. Like life, her approach is layered, a mix of serious and funny, surreal and specific. Sometimes nothing makes sense, and at other times it’s all too literal. Her hand is ever-present in the accumulation of drawings, sewn pieces, painted surfaces, and strung up scraps. The room is encased in bright orange construction fencing, acting as both a signal of danger and an almost overwhelming tactile presence.