Peter Blum is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Daniel Rich entitled Systematic Anarchy at 20 West 57th Street, New York. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, January 23rd, from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition runs through March 15th.
Daniel Rich’s new body of work continues to examine how the reproduction and proliferation of images shape our perception of physical structures and the ideologies that they embody. By translating found images into paintings, Rich seeks to call attention to implicit political and social narratives transcribed in the built environment.
According to Rich, a pervasive theme in his work is the “highly symbolic role architecture plays in politics and its power to function as a vehicle for the inscription of history.” The artist’s meticulous and systematic approach to the making of the paintings mimics the construction of the architectural forms that he depicts. The result is a densely layered surface where each form in the sourced image corresponds to a mapped out and stenciled shape of color in the painting.
The completed paintings address the viewer first as a precise patchwork of form and color, then as a criticism of the edifice of representation, and finally—as a depository for the artist's ongoing meditations on the fragile and fallible political, social, and economic systems that shape the individual's relationship to the world.
Daniel Rich was born in 1977 in Ulm, Germany and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Rich received his BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and his MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He recently had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA (2013) as well as the following group exhibitions: October 18, 1977, Gasser Grunert Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Birgit Rathsmann (2013); LANY, curated by Mario Diacono, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY (2010); 1989-2009: Paintings of the Berlin Airports 20 Years after the Fall of the Wall, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL (2009); Transitions- Painting at the (other) end of art, Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Downburst, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York, NY (2008); His work is included in the permanent collections of The Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College, Winter Park, FL and the Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia, Italy.