Richard Aldrich at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Artist: Richard Aldrich

Exhibition title: MDD

Venue: Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium

Date: October 16, 2016 – January 15, 2017

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens

Richard Aldrich (1975, Hampton, U.S.A.) plays in his work with images, text, painting, publications and music to evoke very different references and experiences. His paintings can be very expressive and colourful, but also minimalist and very determined, sometimes abstract then again figurative, occasionally painted with impasto brushstrokes, then flat without texture. After the many innovations painting underwent in the twentieth century, an artist like Richard Aldrich can have the freedom to radically paint as he likes and experiment without maintaining a so-called pioneering position on the art of painting. Each exhibition may add new story lines or layers of meaning to his work.

The American artist Richard Aldrich (b.1975) uses many different painting styles to create a body of work that deals with both his own living environment as well as literature, music and art history. His work can at times appear quite expressive, yet also minimalist and well thought out; it is sometimes abstract, at other times figurative, sometimes painted with impasto brushwork, sometimes flat and devoid of texture. After the many innovations that the medium of painting has gone through in the twentieth century, an artist like Richard Aldrich has the ultimate freedom to do as he pleases and experiment at will, adding in each exhibition new story lines or layers of meaning to his work.

In the way Richard Aldrich creates his paintings there is no evolution to discover in terms of themes or composition, it is rather a jumping back and forth: from text to image, from abstract to figurative, from large format to small format … Painting made in the same month can look very different whereas paintings made several years apart may show very clear similarities in texture and composition. What is irrevocably evolving is time and thus the perception of a work throughout this timespan: today a work made ten years ago is perceived in a very different way, both by the artist and the viewer. Hence Richard Aldrich finds it fascinating to view his works in retrospective, because it allows for new interpretations of the same work, much in the same way that we revisit art/ideas/themes from the past. It is his way to reflect on the position of the artist and his/her relationship with the present and the past.

Each viewer has a different knowledge and will therefore interpret the work and the exhibition of Richard Aldrich in a singular way. For the artist it does not matter how well you are informed, but how you deal with it. Richard Aldrich likes to create uncertainty and ambiguity about his work to generate new interpretations that the individuals own interpretation is most important. He does not consider his work as the representation of a concept or the development of an aesthetic program, but rather sees it as an organic entity generating very diverse ideas and unpredictable experiences.

Richard Aldrich, MDD, installation view, 2016