Madeline Rupard: 2002 Subaru Forester Presented by Mark Miller Subaru

In the summer of 2020, artist Madeline Rupard bought an 18-year-old blue Subaru so she could leave her Queens apartment during the height of New York’s pandemic lockdowns. What began as a practical purchase to serve particular needs became a steady and reliable companion for repeated cross-country journeys—packed to the brim with all her belongings, fears, and dreams—as she followed various opportunities and instincts.

2002 Subaru Forester finds Rupard four years later, on her final road trip. Living far from New York City, she is reckoning with the looming sale of her beloved car—”a scrappy, pragmatic sanctuary” and a personification of what Rupard calls “stubborn, dumb hope.” In many ways, the Subaru has served as a sole witness to Rupard’s life as she shifted and changed. The resulting paintings and texts in this exhibition, narrated in stream-of-consciousness, draw from that last drive taken while Rupard was grieving the death of a friend.

James Joyce famously said, “in the particular is contained the universal,” meaning that deep human truths surface in the specific, ordinary details of everyday life. At heart, the exhibition is a meditation on painting itself: its ancient aspiration to hold time still and preserve what would otherwise pass into memory. In an age marked by quick consumption and perpetual movement, Rupard’s effort to transform a well-loved car and a fleeting final drive into slow, hand-painted images feels like a defiant act to hold on and to remember.