Rachelle Reichert creates work that explores social and ecological concerns caused by technology. Her practice involves the formal investigation of and intensive research about earthbound materials in relation to their origin. Carbon and salt are the subject and medium of her work. She depicts entropic processes, such as crystallization and corrosion. She layers, folds, rubs, and presses graphite (a crystalline form of carbon) and salt to create structures, whose precarious states of transformation are recorded and amplified through sculptures, photographs, and drawings. The monochromatic drawings contain regions of loose marks balanced with passages of meticulous observation. Her process is inspired by the self-organizing tendencies of the substances to stratify and form geometric structures. The graphite and salt produce an image of themselves through their physical properties. Material agency is apparent in graphite’s repulsion of water and salt’s oxidation of metal. She works with this agency to create visual ambiguity—a space where the viewer can rediscover the matter from which they originate.

Reichert’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. In 2017, she presented her artwork at the California Climate Change Symposium, the San Francisco State of the Estuary Conference, the American Geophysical Union Meeting, and was granted a Research Ambassadorship from Planet Labs to create anthropocentric climate-related artwork. Her work has been reviewed and published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Make Magazine, and New American Paintings. She was born in New Jersey and she lives and works in Oakland, California.

rachellereichert.com