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Born in 1956 in New York, NY, U.S.A. |
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"What I've submitted in this presentation includes a bridge between the last two phases of my work. These serve, for coherence sake, as links, which in my case hold every effort of a twenty-five year career together. The first of these collections, which precede what I am working on now, borrows from what Willem de Kooning, of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, went on about Collage Principle. I relate to it, not because my work includes collage, but because as principle in assembling thoughts and inspirations and ultimately to develop an unconventional palette. The Collage Principle was mostly, at least for me, an attitude of constructivity: gestures of excavating underpainting via instruments such as a wallscraper; of recycling materials already drawn or painted on; etc. I’ve been called an Abstract Expressionist, and in some regards I consider myself, if at all, one of a fourth or even a fifth generation. I always singled out de Kooning, however, probably because the Dutch School of Painting played the most important part in my art school formation, their relation to the matiére of oil painting being always in my opinion superior others. At this time, I also had a fascination with an industrial edge, with contrasts between black and yellow, black and white, with foil, metallic pigments, text, metal and glass. And in a darkroom, where I recycled the use of my photographic negatives, I gave birth to narratives within these paintings.
In recent years I’ve used a different principle derived from fields other than painting, mostly from literature and music, to elaborate on my palette. I’m swearing that I can hear in color. The complexities and richness I enjoy in assembling collage works, I reckon, led me to an interest in labyrinths as an attitude, therefore I christened it as my Labyrinth Principle. This one's going to be tricky to explain, so instead I will mention inspirers. The depth imposed by writers such as Jose Saramago on our imagination (my favorite writer of the last five years who last year earned the Nobel), by music composers such as Robert Ashley and his configuration for his next 49 operas, by Brian Wilson of Pop fame (especially on his acclaimed Smile project, fragmented in its conception), and by Prokofiev and his masterpiece Romeo and Juliet. These are a few of many who corrupt and inspire what I must destroy and recreate. It has always excited me so to be the painter among my peers who work by other means, with other tools, but who maintain a similar reflection on society. Contrast in my earlier work was of utter importance. With this later work, contrast has been redefined within a spectrum of color and light. Thank you."
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Selection of paintings from Ritchard Rodriguez |
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