James Richards - Hack the Analog

Opening Reception September 10th 5 - 7pm

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to present Hack the Analog by James Richards. This is the Los Angeles-based artist’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view September 10 through October 22, 2016 with an opening preview on Saturday, September 10th from 5-7pm.

Hack the analog refers to the concept of confounding the standard notion of what a painting (as object) is and how it is made. The work in this show explores new iterations of the material components of a painting and how they are assembled.

Several freestanding pieces have had their “stretchers” replaced by metal shelving units and plastic crates. The canvas has been hand woven into the structure using rope and strips of cloth creating a heavily textured surface upon which thick layers of paint are applied, creating, as it does, the effect of encasing hours of activity in a plastic coating.

Wall paintings in the show exhibit a new weaving technique where the rope/yarn is woven between two stacked picture planes creating what Richards likes to think of as a 3rd axis surface. There is a shallow space created which does not easily resolve itself. The effect produces a surface that seems to be alternating between forming and dissolving through some sort of chemical process. This mix of crudely hand crafted object and taut compositional surface plays with notions of negative and positive space, both physically and pictorially.

While the objects themselves pay homage to the satisfaction of viewing physical objects in real space, aspects of the digital world are evident in the flat, hard edge compositions painted on top of the rough surface – compositions that have their origins in computer drawings executed with a digital pencil on an iPad. These objects fall in to the category of artworks that are difficult to categorize, having elements of drawing, sculpture, painting, craft and furniture in them, not to mention the domestic and the industrial. There is a hyper-physicality to these objects-as-paintings which employ more of a maximization of materials and labor than the more ephemeral nature of the artist’s previous bodies of work.

James Richards holds an MFA from Art Center of College and Design, Pasadena, CA and a BFA from California State University, Fullerton, CA. He has exhibited in several group exhibitions including, Woven at the Sturt Haaga Gallery, Descanso Gardens; Floor Flowers, Peggy Phelps Gallery, Claremont Graduate University; Electric Mud, Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston; and Plane/Structures at Otis Gallery, Los Angeles. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.