7/01/2007

Richard Aldrich

19 comments:

Painter said...

Richard Aldrich
Elizabeth Dee
20th Street
NYC

DarthFan said...

Im not sure what the point is, because its not institutional critique, because this kind of work is allready institutionalized.

Unless you can critique the institution by aping the institution - which has a kind of satirical function.

The humor of such a clusterfucked satire in this case is lost on the jaded. It would seem to me to be more of an empty refferent, like "the" or "look" or "$$".

One can only assume that this artist is faking "freshness".

If they are "faking freshness", might I suggest drugs - I'm hoping to score some mescaline or mushrooms.

What is the funtion of this sort of painting in your context/ In mine it gets you laughed at as a sort of art world suck up.

Dumbpainter said...

Painting Lite...

No pictorial space, Less filling

Anonymous said...

Lupe Nunez-Fernandez sez of Aldrich's canvases, it's ... a sense of many brief things being said at the same time.
Kinda like abstract surrealism, the 'surreal-schism' Ud, he's using icon tools as icons for the pictorial, while the canvas reveals its own space. The painting then is sort of like an old-fashioned desktop. The brush, the quill, that other name for ball-point pen, and then the keyboard doodle ideas back impressions half-dissolved 3/4 submerged -- fizzy aspirin.
The ScreeN

MF said...

At least he uses a nice, professional stretcher bar.

adhunt said...

Is this part of a retrospective of the artist's student work?
Not very good art. Or pretentious as hell

zipthwung said...

The ideal performance for a bouffon would be one where the audience is wildly entertained, and then go home, realize their lives are meaningless, and commit suicide. This of course is a theoretical ideal instead of an anticipated outcome.

CAP said...

Is this still "the art world's sharpest forum for critical debate"?

Just checking.

webthing said...

Meh!

Depiction of shitness, brave magic, futile theory, slackstructuralist whispering. Buy it for $10 just for the frame, restretch it and paint the same thing again but with painstaking chalk work so perhaps it is more of the same

a) non academic controlled frustrate
b) academic sphincter-pinching

i probably don't even mean that. In a way i love it like a squat full of great cooks and i hope to see it in 2031 when the colours have faded and the canvas has threaded and it gets a serious dada look happening so i can use it as a yardstick for when life as an artist was a barren and struggle addled land serving more as ripoff fuel for industries who trade in intelligent rebel attitude playing fool subversive, and for your favourite philistines to scoff turkey neck at again, i just wish i could call this classical painting. i love it that painting won't die, even if it sucks the arse bag.

zipthwung said...

SOme people might say "get off the cross, we need the wood."

These are people for whom Richard Tuttle signifies all that is wrong with art. Pragmatic and utilitarian, the brook no shirking.

"Look at my nice stretcher through the crude hole in my bad painting."

You might say, cleansing your palette for yet another unholy look at more avant guard kitch.


How do you paint about your trip to the hospital without being a didactic bore? How do you keep painting, long after your theoretical framework has collapsed under its own ponderous weight?

Without an overseer, and only the will to live?

Anonymous said...
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CAP said...

Off-line I am berated for being too negative here (in vivid terms).
So I resolve to look on the bright side, go toward the light!
(and quietly, to avoid going off-line so much).
Guess I’ll leave the tooth and nail stuff to Ursula’s Dad, in more ursine mood.

Anyway the Richard Tuttle 3D/2D interface occurred to me as well. Critics like Richard Kalina or Stephen Ellis usually get this job.
But yeah, we can relate the elements to Picture in a number of ways – shape, color, edge, line, facture and no element contains all or only one and we can adjust or measure some symmetry from the pale brown stretcher to the dull green blobs and oblique lines underneath – arrive at a formal system that is so loose and diverse, the point seems to be just this unravelling or relaxation.
Like 90s and later Tuttle, Picture seems so laid back you wonder the artist ever summoned the energy to start it or the resolve to finish it.
The effect is feeble but adamant.
Upbeat or what?

Anonymous said...

Isn't it about the support and slight interventions?
There is enough diversity within the frame to focus the attention to painting without getting away from it, keeps coming back to the support.
The playful tinkering with the different messages and massages is kind of charming.
Of the images up at http://www.corvi-mora.com/ I can't find one that I don't like, each is just smart enough, just knowing enough, and just chancy enough to keep the attention. I don't know how it would go if I had to sit with one for a day. Would I spend half of it thinking about what he has done, or be keenly looking for a killer visual message?
... more 'to do about...' ?
... or a subtle balance?

CAP said...

At about 7' x 5' playful starts to get ponderous, I find. The precarious, smart/chancy connections are certainly there but once we allow the support as part of the picture, pretty soon the back wall and the rest of the gallery are in the picture as well.
I agree it's about relating different parts to the stretcher braces (in different ways) but is this so different from relating one part of the painting surface to another? is there there any advantage in cutting through the surface, if we're only to play another formalist balancing act?

It's a shame we're the only ones up for this discussion Concrete (and nice to see you back - thought Japan might finally have got too much for a while there) I'm not sure the incised painting surface is ever going to be more than the inverse of the shaped canvas, but I wouldn't dismiss it too hastily either.

Anonymous said...

... old guy I wanted to say support/surface, but we both know where that would lead back to...

... Notice how most of the images are cropped online, can you find an installation shot? So there must be some agreement that the painting is just that, and when the wall comes through it doesn't talk too much outside the painting except for a general concrete relation, the position on the wall, as any painting would.
So what you have is an artist asking questions about a painting and what's inside it, on it's surface, concrete surface, which includes sometimes stretcher bars and a bit of a wall. The SBs and cuts function as compositional elements for a painting that definitely has a frame and border.
I find that interesting, using a history of marks and incisions, but keeping the lid on the magnitude, the other history of possibilities, how far out [from the frame/edge] a painting is able to go.
I mean I don't see the artist anytime soon building a house of mirrors in the pragmatic sense. Instead he's set minor mirrors all facing home, where the lonesome is, the doors/windows/walls, the historical shelf full of singular painting.

I'm here. I think?

CAP said...

Hey Concrete,
Couldn’t find an installation view, still at least they give dimensions.
There are a number of ambiguities to the jpeg – generally the bigger the work the more problematic the repro anyway – like what seems a white frame to the work, but on closer inspection looks like perverse cropping around the work against a ‘white’ wall – similarly the background behind the stretcher I assume is the typical gallery wall, although could be clever trompe I suppose, similarly that slot/line shape to the left of the left green blob – is that another incision?
I wish I could go and see.
If a collector hung the work on a brick wall, say, that would dramatically change the ‘internal’ relationships.
I like your point about a painting just being what’s inside the frame – even when there’s no support in parts there – I don’t think even Greenberg thought of that – the unstretched canvas meets the uncovered stretcher.
The Surface/Support thought fits well with the Tuttle idea – especially his 60s unstretched, shaped and dyed works.

Keeping a lid on it, as you say, is the tricky part – making sure the work stops at the frame, even if borrowing the wall behind. I think it comes down to a balance – more inside elements than out – and that’s true here.
Actually when I first looked at it the link from the wooden stretcher to the green blobs made me think of foliage and more figurative readings, but that’s not sustained.
Aldrich’s other works include notational looking figures and text though, which I can imagine he might add to the lines, if pressed to extent the picture – or tip that delicate balance between in and out.

Anonymous said...

Aunt Draveldrinclinedop said that nothing can be taken away from the picture plane experience. I'm inclined to go with that. As soon as you subtract some bit the experience reconfigures to one that the brain and the senses are able to make sense of. Nothing is thus missing, it's just been reconfigured.
It's not hard to get that a Painting Is Its Own Propaganda. P[ii]OP. popular myth, so on, so on.
Here we get the slacker experience. And it's suggesting us to do two contrary things:
1] Slow down, attend to detail mapping.
2] Skip over, go fast, and attend to the overall.

well old guy, two... makes one, with residue = 3

CAP said...

That's a lot of maths to remember for a slacker, but I'll try.

sharkboy said...

Richard Aldrich has described his works as stand-ins, props, for the real thing. I understand the Fontana referances, but I do not believe that is what he is going for. Since they are props, the curtain of the theatre is half open, we can see what is going on in the background. Not that the internal (or external) referances are beautiful, accepting or scarred, but they are full of integrity, on his part. I find myself going back to an Aldrich, in case I missed something. Sometimes I do, most times I do not. The paintings could be fabricated realities like a Japanese theatre. I find some works, very strong in some aspects, some works missing a few fully thought out ideas. The scale is more of a turn on than a turn off. Misplaced logos and unmeasured deadpan humor. I have spent some time in Hampton, Va. where Aldrich is from and I can see that he might be dragging some influence from that area. The area is full of imports from around the country, reeks of its own fabrication. Not really a bad thing. I do not like all of his works, but the ones I do, hit hard. Some are half thought out ideals, hanging onto some (maybe secret referance) that is still waiting backstage. Some are grand, right on point and bordering institutionalization. And when they hit, they hit hard and are memorable. He is one that I pay strong attention too. And I cannot wait to see what is next.....