brian ritchard - portfolio
Press Quotes |
| “Brian Ritchard earned second place
with one of his enigmatic ‘Crop Paintings’, a format he developed by
cutting his wooden ‘canvas’ into an unconventional shape—in this case,
a trio of overlapping circles that…suggests the roving viewpoint of
a camera or telescope. The unexpected shape raises questions about
conventional modes of looking and seeing, while the generic wooded
landscape pictured within is teasingly unspecific” Megan Voeller Changing Views:Looking at the World Through the Eyes of Postmodern Artsists Weekly Planet Tampa 2006 "For the conceptual painter Brian Ritchard, the theme of "the memory of place" reflects his desire to disrupt most viewers'; automatic and sentimental responses to natural beauty which have been shaped by exposure to picturesque images. Travel has also been an indirect influence on his critiques of the cultural distortions of the landscape. "... his initial experiences with the raw physicality of natural vistas were subliminal as he moved extensively across the country with his family as a result of his father's military career. The effects of these earlier experiences perhaps suggest his fascination with man's compositional "improvement" of the natural environment as practiced by the influential landscape architect and social proselytizer, Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted's desire to artificially sculpt the natural terrain as a civilizing tool is referenced throughout Ritchard's deliberately artificial romantic compositions. Layering small Polaroid windows across atmospheric Arcadias, he emphasizes the invasiveness of man';s desire to edit and control the image of landscape for his own purposes. " John Brunetti, ARTNews and Dialog Magazine contributor and curator Evanston Art Center publication "The Memory of Place" 2001 "...Ritchard goes further, painting facsimiles of Polaroid photographs into larger landscapes. The presence of the counterfeit Polaroids bears witness to the hand of man, pointing up how all representation, no matter how realistic, is a construct, a game, a fiction..." Alan Artner Review, Chicago Tribune Chicago, 2001 " In Brian Ritchard';s understated imagery, the violent sublimity of a rugged mountain vista is smoothed out and distanced into the simpler beauty of a hill silhouetted in profile. While Ritchard reminisces over the varied landscapes seen during childhood travels across America with his family, he paints the view as stored in his mind';s eye. The view, as does memory, has become softened through the distance of time. Images of prairie, forest and waterfall are abstracted into broad, essential form; portrayed as signal, beckoning, warning. By imposing the miniature view from a Polaroid photograph upon the larger scene, Ritchard plays with the idea of capturing a moment and fixating it for eternity, thus superimposing it on memory and for the actual experience versus the recording of that experience and how memories are collected... Reliving a journey through memory and through snapshots, Ritchard hopes to reconcile our general estrangement from nature, catching hold of the landscapes essence... a keepsake imprinted on our conscience." Jo Burke, Assistant Director and Curator Northern Illinois University Art Museum "The Interior Journey" NIU exhibition publication 1998 "Curator Brian Ritchard, himself a painter, has attempted to do his small part to remedy the situation with this exhibition, which gathers works by 22 painters, most of whom , for various reasons, have not achieved the level of attention Ritchard feels their work warrants. Ritchard has found an impressive group of artists making high-quality, low-key paintings that are flying just under the art-world radar at the moment." Ann Wiens "Link:22 Painters, Jan Cicero Gallery" NewCity Review, 08/98 "...it is Brian Ritchard';s small paintings, which resemble Polaroids in size and appearance, that steal the show. Within the tiny, charming canvases, the Chicago artist has packed his vision of a travelogue, transporting the viewer to lush green mountains, cascading waterfalls, calm lakes and rugged desert..." Barbara Buchholz Gallery Watch Chicago Tribune Review, 02/97 "...Ritchard';s installations are modular grids of small canvases whose spare surfaces are occasionally punctuated with realistic imagery and poetic text, in his attempts to synthesize painted form with poetic thought structures. The works evoke a sense of Post-minimalist deconstruction while at the same time paying a half-hearted homage to the Grandeur of Representationalism. The disjunctive grid surface serves to activate the gallery wall much as a line of poetry would a blank page..." Olga Zdanovics New Art Examiner Review, 03/94 "A single word and its complex relationship to nature and culture is given careful consideration in the paintings of Brian Ritchard. In "Echo", the word itself is broken into its component letters and stretched atop a luminous bank of clouds. The multiple canvases mirror the breaking apart and reconfiguration of language and meaning..." Barbara O';Brien Curator, Montserrat College of Art, Massachusetts "The Deep Heart';s Core" Exhibition Catalog 1996 "Utilizing the language of painting, Brian Ritchard instills the deconstructed art object with an almost hyper-conscious spirituality. His tenaciously worked surfaces submit sensitively rendered hands - sometimes open-palmed or occasionally offering flowers -... which honor the grandeur of Representationalism. These historically influenced images, however, are often placed in the center of a grid of small canvases, surrounded by Ritchard';s rendering of lazy letters emerging from his paint';s ethereal face. Typically a tool to convey the pointedly intellectual, these characters emit an unusually visceral tone. Juxtaposing traditional and non-traditional elements, Ritchard proves the effect of the artist's hand on the supposed autonomy of conceptual paint." Deborah Wilk Catalog Essay, MWMWM Gallery Chicago, 1992 |