Richard Aldrich: Time Stopped, Time Started

Gladstone Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Richard Aldrich. The exhibition features works ranging in scale, material, and technique, from printed dibond, to oil on canvas, to ceramic appliqué. The breadth of work on display encapsulates Aldrich’s conceptualism in which migrating forms and systems interact with one another. Existing outside of a linear stylistic progression, Aldrich posits that what is at stake is not style, form or material, but rather how these are utilized and engaged with to express a more global understanding of a complete body–be that an idea, feeling, or concept.

Aldrich’s paintings are layered with the process of their own creation as well as the inspiration of everyday life and experiences. In “Time Stopped, Time Started”(2015), splattered wooden slats, previously used as blocks to set paintings upon while working, bear the history of the artist’s studio process as excess paint drips have accumulated over the past decade. Enlisted as formal elements, the slats are affixed to the canvas, with slits cut in the linen above them. The weight of the wood allows gravity to stretch and widen the slits over time. Initially the slats, positioned horizontally, measured a process in time; now, in a vertical position, the slats activate a new accumulative durational process.

In the artist’s work, motifs reoccur and evolve, newly invested with a familiar yet undeniably reflexive, altered narrative; symbolic objects from Aldrich’s life are utilized with new interpretation and potential. “With The Pinstripes of Tuck Tuck Tuck” and “The Hurray 7 inches of Tuck Tuck Tuck”, printed dibond panels identical to panels previously exhibited in 2013 and 2011 are now affixed with strips of cloth from a worn out shirt and records from Aldrich’s other music project, Hurray. Time and memory serves an integral role in the works as the potential of remembering the existence of the previous works, and the question of whether they are the same ones, is part of the understanding of this new presentation.  As Aldrich says, “Time can be used as a medium, just like oil paint.”