Exhibition Dates: November 1 – November 29, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 1st from 6–8 pm in conjunction with Prospect.1
Gallery Location: Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Monday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; arthurrogergallery.com
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Jim Richard. The exhibition will be on view at the Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia Street from November 1st – 29th, 2008. Mr. Richard will be in attendance at the opening reception hosted by the gallery on Saturday, November 1st, from 6 to 8 pm in conjunction with the opening night of Prospect.1.
Modern Circles, 2007. Oil on linen, 54 x 53 inches.
In the tradition of Vuillard and Bonnard and more recently Liechtenstein, with this exhibition Jim Richard continues his remarkable series of oil paintings that depict high style domestic interiors. In his renowned interior paintings, Richard’s mordant wit imbues unpeopled period rooms with social ironies. The interiors feature period furniture, kitsch objects, and works of art usually with a modernist flavor. Formal rigor and clean line are always evident in Richard’s work. The artist’s paintings are executed with uncommon elegance and subtlety.
The extraordinary interior painting, Modern Circles, 2007, is a perceptual tour de force involving a broad gamut of seamlessly integrated sources along with a phantasmagoria of optical effects and freewheeling interventions. The exuberant, swirling disco mod interior with its mirrored surfaces and “conversation pit” of curved banquettes is redolent of the early 1970’s. In Modern Circles, there are readily discernable pictorial presences of works by Frank Stella and Donald Judd.
In addition to interior scenes, in this exhibition Richard also includes paintings that he categorizes as “emblems.” Around the Bend, 2008, and Over the Dunes, 2008 are two such works in which details such as artwork, pattern, and decorative objects are taken out of the context of the interior décor and reassembled in an emblematic presentation. In both of these striking and evocative works a framed painting hovers in mid-air over the landscape below.
A professor in the Fine Arts Academy at the University of New Orleans, Jim Richard received his M.F.A. from the University of Colorado. He has exhibited at the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Vienna, Austria.