Richard Wright Psychedelic Wall Drawings
Subtle and deliberate, Richard Wright’s wall drawings are characterized by an enduring elegance. The designs hover between op art, minimalism and the psychedelic with a modern touch, responding directly to contemporary culture and, more literally, to the architcture of the situation at hand. For his Dutch debut at the Van Abbemuseum, Anja Dorn spoke with Wright about tricky paradoxes, frescoes and other fascinations.
You are known for wall-drawings which you develop out off specific architectonic structures and which in some way specify these structures themselves, as for example the first drawing you did for BQ at Cologne in 1999. At that time the gallery-space – a former lodge – was very small in floor-space but had high ceilings. In my memory I got conscious of this fact through your drawing. From the upper angle of the wall floral loops grew into the space like a cobweb. The concentration was literally risen and accelerated the whole room. Generally speaking your drawings seem to create high concentration in spaces. So I am wondering how you work in group-shows, when there might be other works in the same space. Do you already know where you will work at the Van Abbe Museum with its complex architectonic structure? And how do you think about the situation there?
‘It is not always possible to control the context of your work. In fact I think sometimes this is a hopeless or even vain inclination (though this doesn’t seem to stop me from trying). “Empty” space is often an important part of what I am trying to do. So working in a group show can be more difficult as there is sometimes a tendency, from various points of view, to want to fill space. Often this has something to do with the balance of a show. But working with other artists is interesting because they give me ideas and also because I am attracted to the thought that my work is inserted into a situation which is less defined – other voices add to a sense of fragility. So the thought of an exclusive and untainted space is perhaps a less interesting possibility for me.
A group of rooms have already been chosen for this exhibition and some works have already been provisionally placed. So it is not a completely free choice, but within this framework I have chosen a room in which in I would like to make a work. At this time the situation is still very open – I do not have a clear idea for the work or how it would connect with the space. As my work will not be the only piece in this room (and I still do not have a clear picture of the overall feeling of the show) I have tried to choose a room that seems to have the most possibilities or the greatest potential for adaptation. Architecture is an emotional as well as a physical structure and it may be that the idea for my work for the Van Abbe will come as much from this dimension as from the volume and light of the space.
When I was approached about this show, by Phillip van den Bossche, I liked the group of artists he had chosen, but I was especially taken with his attitude towards the show. It seemed also to hold a great many possibilities. Perhaps it was like a book that you could start reading on any page’.
Reading the title of the show Subversive Charm as a concept at least it seems possible that the public enters with a high attention towards double edges and other forms of tightrope walks, which happens rarely within group-shows. Ambiguousness seems to be an important aspect within your work. Actually your remark on the need of empty space made me think of an aspect of one of your works that seems a kind of tightrope walk to me. At Kunstverein Düsseldorf you had a solo show. The exhibition space consists of one long room on the second floor of a heavy concrete building. You worked on the two short walls stressing the spaces dimensions. On one of the walls a structure of squares recalling a perspectively distorted stair was blend into the space’s shadows. On the opposite wall there was a square field of blue lines breached by black and red circles. It seemed to allude to a non existing window and also to the idea of a painting as a window to a landscape. In fact the shape of the circle referred to a stovepipe that Joseph Beuys had once pushed through the building’s wall to open it to the outside.
While visiting your show I was very busy with the changing visual effects of the drawings, how it came that the lines seemed to flicker watching them from far or how the relation of a single shape and overall impression was constantly shifting depending on the position in space. But movement through space was also motivated through golden letters that one could see here and there in the frames of the fanlights. Of course one was trying to put the letters into the right sequence in order to find an assumed key to the work. The situation made me think of medieval churches and inscriptions. Having left the show and automatically trying to detach from the physical appearance of things I had doubts if a connotation with churches was not a bit dared. It seemed very close to the Secessionists’ idea of the exhibition-space as a cathedral, which of course implies a contemplative attitude of the visitors but also a purist idea of art. But then I found the parallel to medieval churches filled with frescos very interesting in relation to the way of experiencing painting and the way one is looking for stories and iconographic hints which supposably help to channel the impressions and understand. It is also interesting for the way frescos fit into the architecture and simultaneously dissolve its boundaries. In my opinion Italian fresco-painting is an alternative to the dissolution of the walls into windows in French gothic cathedrals, which is aiming at epiphany. Anyhow I was wondering if Italian fresco-painting does play a role for you?
‘Yes of course Italian fresco painting has made a huge impression on me. I do like the thought that these works will not come to me. You cannot know the Convento di San Marco without going there and somehow going there (in every aspect) becomes part of knowing.
I think I could talk at length about artists from late medieval Italy that have interested me – especially those from Sienna. I wish I had another life to study them more closely – what is still shocking about these works is the extraordinary quality of manufacture. But in relation to your question, I am not sure about developing the idea of the exhibition space as a cathedral. Though I must say that in general the whole spectacle of the museum does tend to be orientated in this direction. Which may make it difficult to avoid.
Of course I feel in very close connection to many artists who have worked before not only from the west and I have a great attraction to certain materials. But perhaps what interests me about painting on walls is more close to your idea of simultaneously “dissolving boundaries”. For me this has something to do with the idea of painting becoming part of everything else. I always say that painting is a physical act; it is about touching matter, but paradoxically painting is essentially immaterial. It is a projection. Perhaps part of the meaning – in this contradiction – comes from a sense of re enactment in the experience of painting. Maybe this is connected to your sense of ‘moving through’ space, but not only physical space.’
You are working with a brush, which may seem astonishing considering the very precise graphic character, complexity and regularity of the patterns. At close range it is possible to see unevenness and little differences in the brush-strokes, but also the pencil draft. Seen from far these irregularities make the drawings vibrate, seen from close they proof the effort of work which was put into them. Once you said that you appreciate Mondrian for the almost factual concreteness of his paintings. As yours also Mondrian’s works seem so perfect from a distance and so surprisingly handmade from close by. Maybe this is part of what makes this sense of concreteness. Looking on the one hand at the way his abstract paintings developed out off landscape painting and on the other hand at the way that your paintings try to catch the physical and emotional character of a space one could also speak of a concept of abstraction that is not independent of the physical appearance of things as for example language is, but that is rather as a kind of condensation of things, similar to a stock cube being the abstraction of a soup. Would that fit into your idea of painting being a part of everything?
‘I think when I talk about painting being part of everything else I mean that if painting were a microscope that looked at the world it would look so closely (at such high magnification) that the microscope would become part of the world that was being looked at. The world would disappear and so would the microscope.I like the idea of the stock cube but I do think it implies more distance and more separation. I think if a painting were a word then it would be a noun for which there is no synonym. I do want paintings to be more things than signs, but in the end it is hard to escape the fact that painting is a language with associations. It is true, as you say, that sometimes these associations seem more direct (than abstract) but blue paint is not strictly speaking like sky but it has the potential to evoke recognition or recollection.’
Some of your new works look rather psychedelic. Especially several paper-works resemble Rohrschach motives or fractal structures. They seem to sound the borderline to uncontrollable forms. Already your former wall drawings made me wonder if you do not feel like on a trip while painting and concentrating on little lines and complex patterns for hours and hours. Your latest wall-drawings from Dundee, the Domaine de Kerguéhennec in Britanny and the Gagosian gallery in New York seem to extrovert this kind of experience by exceedingly questioning the boundaries of visual perception. I have the impression that this development is advanced by an interest in spectacle. Would you agree?
‘Certainly the act of prolonged concentration (and perhaps especially repetition) can induce an altered state of awareness. But it is something like a closing down, I would not compare this to a trip; in which state the senses are totally open in all directions. I think your question may be directed towards the idea of hallucination. I am interested in this but I tend to look for it more in the concrete than the symbolic. I think the works you mention approach the question of scale in a different way. I hope this does not only mean they take up more space. I am not quite sure if really understand what you mean by spectacle. I am interested in a kind of suspense. Perhaps this has something to do with the idea of the spectacle but in practice it comes down to worrying about millimetres whilst at the same time wanting the work to seem as easy as falling over.’
Anja Dorn
