Richard Aldrich’s exhibition at the Giuliani Foundation in Rome
The works of Richard Aldrich, who lands at the Giuliani Foundation in Rome for his first solo exhibition in Italy, move on the border between figurative and abstract.
Seductive and analytical at the same time is the gesture of the artist who stops his doing just before it takes on a definite shape. Until 25 June 2022 the Giuliani Foundation in Rome hosts An exploration of how time only exists in half steps (Study of how time exists only in semitones), the first Italian solo show of Richard Aldrich (Hampton, Virginia, 1975).
Painter, photographer, author of sober Installations, the artist, currently residing in Brooklyn, is interested in the intermediate stages that make up the creative process, both at a stylistic and temporal level.
THE RICHARD ALDRICH EXHIBITION IN ROME
The exhibition itinerary, far from the chronological format and the linearity of a common thread, winds along communicating, rough and airy environments, in which Aldrich’s twenty-six works are manifested as sibylline icons that all live in the tension between the abstract and the figurativewithout ever falling into one or the other definition.
These are taciturn images that at first seem not to have much to say, only to reveal the infinite stratifications. Accumulations that know of expectations, additions, condensation.
Small and large format paintings on felt or canvas, oil paintings, wax paintings or treated with acrylic and charcoal alternate in composite recollection. The whispered manipulative violence applied to the surfaces – cut, glued, scraped – is triggered by the finish: the muted colors stand out. The material brushstrokes are exuberant vestiges of a crepuscular déjà-vu.
THE WORKS OF RICHARD ALDRICH
“About a third of the new works in this exhibition date back to the last six or seven years. I like to keep them to myself for a while, to be able to keep observing them while I work on other paintings. I’m interested in deepening the concept of time”, The artist told Adrienne Drake, director and curator of the Giuliani Foundation. “I believe that for myself and for the viewer more direct experience is necessary, full of honesty and liberation“.
The fragments of fabric applied to the canvases, poor and significant materials, interact with the installations. He too, not pretentious, he lets himself be questioned. The pop suggestions of Christmas lights or a miniature ring between monsters are flanked by real ones found objects: a wooden hand, a paper bag, a pair of rusty briefcases.
– Francesca de Paoli