Richard Rezac at Isabella Bortolozzi

Artist: Richard Rezac

Exhibition title: Circum

Venue: Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Germany

Date: September 29 – October 17, 2015

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist, Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

This exhibition presents sculpture selected from the past twenty-five years. Constant among these works is the visual language of geometry applied to human scale. This two-part characteristic is, of course, consistent with architecture generally, but especially within the proportions of an interior inhabited space. The particulars of the Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie rooms have afforded these sculptures – and their proximate relationship – an integrated presentation uniquely specific and mutually reinforcing.

These works are meant as abstractions: conceived, defined and constructed by way of their interior logic, however much they may suggest some representative element. Each sculpture begins with one or several drawings; three of these studies are included in this exhibition. In drawing, weight and gravity are immaterial, so these studies often begin as an improvisation rather than as mindful description, although a distinct idea or image sometimes initiates the drawing (as in Lancaster, 2004; Pacific Sailor, 1997; and Circum, 1992).

With the pace of drawing held to human speed, its correlation in realizing each sculpture is similar: mainly with simple hand-tools, formed incrementally from the general to the specific, through subtractive and additive processes. This allows maximum control and flexibility with the degree of precision in outcome that is most appropriate.

My use of geometric form reveals recognizable order and an awareness of measure and repetition. In these works it becomes necessary for me, however, to dispel or complicate this stability with something akin to organic (dis)order, thus to enliven and promote a balanced composition beyond the familiar.

Richard Rezac

August, 2015