Appears to be Dreaming, a duo exhibition of works by Rachel Collier and Christina Attié Ballantyne that explores the resilience of abstraction as a means for existing within a spectrum of realities. Through a variety of techniques, both painters converse with the unknown, bringing to light a harmony of discourse mediated via the canvas. Both artists will be present at the opening reception.

Thursday, May 9, 2026, at HAIR+NAILS NYC, 39 Henry St.

RACHEL COLLIER Waves on Waves (2026). acrylic, oil, and wool on canvas. 44”x 24”

CHRISTINA ATTIÉ BALLANTYNE New Paths (2026). oil on linen. 42”x 30”

Rachel Collier works between painted and woven fields of abstracted forms. For Collier, the language of abstraction is inherently romantic and powerful in its opposition to a world of rigid forms and ideas. These forms emerge from a fertile darkness, a space where the inscrutable is rife with meaning. The painted pastel fields of shifting colors, intersected by flattened planes from the grid, bring forth the metaphysical and philosophical aspects of the painted world. Attention is divided between the performative act of intuitive painting and the ineffable qualities of translational forms, speaking to self-generated imagery as a site of infinite abundance.

Christina Ballantyne’s work interweaves the intricacies of memory with the processing of latent emotion. These tender works explore the possibilities of painting as a meditative outlet for emotional expression and catharsis. By approaching painting in this somatic manner, Ballantyne spreads, scrapes, scumbles, and washes without the aid of brushes, using hands and rags instead, leaving us with luminous paths and swaths of vibrating color imbued with emotion and movement. The physicality of this process is a transference of psychological observations, a world in which all things exist in relation to one another. From this field of phenomena, a deep sense of bodily knowing emerges.

Both artists come to painting as a site of liberation. For Collier, it is in the act of refusal of hard form, favoring the open-ended approach instead, seeking abundance and expansion over arriving at an anticipated destination. For Ballantyne, painting is also a site of freedom; like Collier, she is not looking for a legible answer but is painting in service of the act of painting itself. To manipulate and express is, in many ways, the summit of the practice; the finished image is rather the witness and proof of the experience. In Collier’s and Ballantyne’s work, there is a strong tether to the threshold of the seen and unseen. The paintings that emerge from this space are objects imbued with ambiguity, but are also entities familiar to themselves, as if capable of their own private existence. Appears to be Dreaming references the activation of a painted world, a world in which paintings are themselves evidence of energies capable of their own autonomy. Each painting in this exhibition has an inherently emotive power, pulling us, the viewer, into a state of increased awareness and reverence for sources unknown.

ARTIST BIOS:

Christina Attié Ballantyne (b. 1990, Houston, TX) is a Los Angeles-based artist. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021. Solo and two-person exhibitions include Hair & Nails (New York City, NY), Untitled Fair (Houston, TX), Julius Caesar (Chicago), Hair & Nails (Minneapolis, MN), Sulk (Chicago, IL), and Martha’s Contemporary (Austin, TX). Group exhibitions include NADA Miami, Felix Art Fair (Los Angeles, CA), Chez Max et Dorothea (Los Angeles), Ivory Gate Gallery (Shanghai, China), Make Room LA (Los Angeles, CA), and Andrew Rafacz (Chicago, IL). Christina has served as an adjunct professor at East Los Angeles Community College and Minneapolis Institute of Design. She has been a recipient of the Helen Frankenthaler Award (2021) and lectured at the Brand Art Library in Los Angeles (2025). Alongside artist Ishmael Lipman, she founded Ouroboros, an online educational platform focused on providing affordable graduate-level education to emerging artists.

http://www.christinaballantyne.com

Instagram: @xtinaballantyne2.0

Rachel Collier (b. 1981) is an artist born and based in Minneapolis. Collier’s work is rendered in expansive color, transcribing ecstatic realms that populate our shared consciousness. Repeated abstract forms anchor familiar psychic landscapes to our physical world, stirring the spirit in preparation for advancement or departure. While referencing the languages of maps and topography, her compositions deconstruct from the grid to imagine transcendent space. Collier has her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and recent exhibitions and publications include HAIR+NAILS Gallery (Minneapolis, MN), Felix Fair (LA, CA), NADA Miami (Miami, FL), Intersect Fair (Aspen, CO), the Nemeth Art Center (Park Rapids, MN), I Love You Too (Portland, OR), TOA Presents (Cody, Wyoming), Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation (Ojai, CA), Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN), Saint Kate’s Arts Hotel (Milwaukee, WI), New American Paintings, MN Artists. Residencies: The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY (2021, 2022); Anderson Center Jerome Emerging Artist Residency and Fellowship, Red Wing, MN (2022); Nido invitational residency and exhibition, Monte Castello di Vibio, Umbria, Italy (2022); Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO (2022); Roswell Artist-in-Residence (alternate), Roswell, NM (2024-2025.)

http://www.rachelcollier.com

Instagram: @rachelcolliermw