RAIR | 2020

Justin Richel | Roswell, NM

Justin Richel’s work deals with the art and artifice inherent in the medium of painting through the combined practice of sculpture and painting. Richel received a BFA from Maine College of Art and later studied the technique of icon painting at the Franciscan Monastery in Kennebunk, Maine. He has been awarded residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center (MA), the Monhegan artists’ residency (ME) and an Arts/Industry residency at Kohler Co. (WI), His work is held in the collections of the Portland Museum of Art (ME), the John Michael Kohler Art Center (WI) and Fidelity Investments (MA), and has exhibited widely at various museums and art centers including, the Wadsworth Atheneum (CT), DeCordova Sculpture Park & Museum (MA), Ogunquit Museum of American Art (ME), the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (ME), the Fitchburg Art Museum (MA) and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ME).

www.justinrichel.com

Roswell Museum and Art Center

Rair exhibition • Justin Richel “A Window, A Door, A Ladder” • January 8, 2021 - February 19, 2021

Continuing with his interest in artifice, simulacra and trickster mythologies, Richel’s recent body of work delves deeper into the inquiry of painting itself. The impetus for this recent body of work began with a simple line of questioning.

“What is a painting?”
Perhaps the simplest answer to that question, is its materiality.
• Traditionally: Paint, canvas, and wood supports.

“What is the function of a painting?”
• A window or portal, an aperture.
• A framework or ideology.
• An object of and for contemplation.

Adhering to the subsequent list, the work within the exhibition is simply constructed from paint, canvas and wood.

The exhibition title; A Window, A Door, A Ladder, refers to the internal and external world, psychological states of mind and thresholds to alternative possibilities. Archetypal by nature, these forms feature large in dreamscapes as well as our waking lives. They represent bridges between awareness and the unconscious.

“Without knowing it, I had opened a window onto something else. It was a sort of loophole. You know, I’ve always felt this need to escape myself...” - Marcel Duchamp

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