Brian Richmond - Suburban Landscapes
May 2 through September 30, 2015. Opening reception May 9, 1-6pm.
Brian Richmond's painstaking, precise renditions of discarded mass produced packaging combine paper modeling and acrylic painting to create to-scale sculptural paintings that ask us to reconsider the throwaway objects that populate and crowd our contemporary landscapes.
These works carry an implied critique of our consumer culture, but they move beyond a straightforward criticism and also read as a celebration of the vast amount of care, sheer hard work, and long histories of design and invention embodied by each 'worthless' object thrown on the ground, lying by the side of the road. Richmond says, "Packaging is impersonal and ubiquitous. You see it everywhere you go; on the street, in the store, at work, in and outside your house. It is so omnipresent we stop noticing it. It is part of our landscape as if it was naturally occurring, while it is highly manufactured. By individualizing it through the painting process I make something unique which many may at first assume to be “found art” but which is actually a painting." This exhibition of his work at Street Road will include earlier wall pieces, as well as new installations. Coinciding with Maryann Worrell and Doug Mott's Crisis Farm, this show offers another point of reflection and consideration of our 21st century landscapes and how we choose to see them, and to live in them. Brian Richmond graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design with a BFA in 2001. In 2008 he was awarded the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship. In 2012 he was awarded the West Collects acquisition prize. He has exhibited at Pulse Art Fair, Miami in 2012 as part of The West Collection’s “THIS END UP” installation. Brian currently works and resides in Chester County Pennsylvania. |