"Adapt what is useful, reject
what is useless, and add what is specifically your own." - Bruce Lee
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to announce,
Enter the Dragon, a new solo exhibition by James Rieck.
It seems today that no respectable
wardrobe is complete without at least one good ironic T-shirt. This fashionable
form of expression spans every possible posture, whether it is the iconic
portrait of Che Guevara worn by a stockbroker, or the "Just Say No to Drugs"
slogan infamously touted across Lindsey Lohan's chest, the ironic T-shirt has
become an omnipresent part of
life.
Inspired by this ubiquitous form
of communication and self-expression, artist James Rieck uses the T-shirt as a
blank slate upon which he communicates the narrative in his work.
Exclusively appropriating action film stills from Bruce Lee movies,
including the use of Lee's most famous film as the title of his show, Rieck
digitally composes Lee's classic martial art scenes onto his subjects
T-shirts. Each larger than life painting hosts an individual
or group of tantalizing young women, whose body language conveys the
choreographed kung-fu scene adorning their snug fitting shirts.
Simultaneously obvious and
obscure, the paintings are visual double entendres juxtaposing the graphics on
the T-shirt with the posture of the model. Rieck formats his subjects' chests
like a movie screen upon which the narrative plays
out. He creates a dialogue with the viewer using humor to press
many societal 'hot buttons'. Whether referencing the gratuitous commercial
advertisements of American Apparel or Abercrombie & Fitch, or addressing the
prolific amount of pornography that assaults us each day, Rieck manipulates the
obvious sexual content in the work to address a broader debate over
relationships, gender, promiscuity, and violence, finding a delicate balance
between what is present, perceived, and provocative. The paintings' titles such as "Gang Bang", "Cockblock", "Low Blow"
also emphasizes the duality between fighting and
pleasure.
Technically,
Rieck continues to develop his extraordinary deftness of hand.
With an almost airbrush like quality, each photo-realistic painting is
rendered using only three colors: Napthol Red, Sap Green and White.
Rieck's technical prowess is matched by his masterful sense of
composition and cropping. He boils his subject matter down to
its bare essence, allowing the exaggerated scale and exact cropping the ability
to amplify the contextual underpinning of the work.
|
Blackbelt, Oil on canvas, 72 x 54
inches |
James Rieck is currently a faculty member at the Corcoran
College of Art and Design in Washington, DC. He earned both his MFA and his BFA
from the Maryland Institute College of Art, attended the Skowhegan School of
Painting and Sculpture, and the Glasgow School of Art. He has shown at the Flag
Foundation, New York, Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, and the Corcoran
Museum, Washington, DC. Rieck's work is present in the Burger Collection, the
Bollag-Rothschild Collection, Switzerland, and the Chadha Collection, The
Netherlands. Rieck lives and works in Baltimore and has been represented by
Lyons Wier Gallery since
2003.
For more information and images,
please contact:
Michael Lyons Wier at
gallery@lyonswiergallery.com
Phone: (212)242-6220
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