Matthew Ritchie's Universal Quest

Matthew Ritchie with Aranda\ Lasch Arup AGU: The Morning Line , 2008-2009. Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Installation view: Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna June 7, 2011 - June 1, 2012. Photo by Jakob Polacsek

at its worst at the beginning and at Matthew Ritchie’s Universal Quest the end. In his apocalyptic video “Monstrance” at L & M Arts, Los Angeles, Venice Beach and “The Morning Line” in Vienna, Austria, organized projections, like Augur (L & M Arts, by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary 2011), we see the sun from the deepness of the murky water, then by Emese Krunák-Hajagos closer to the surface a single cell outline. Later creatures emerge out of How would God, if he were an artist about the beginning and about the the water and start to move. Then a and a scientist, see our universe from particles from which the universe came tremendous wind whips over the beginning to end in fast-forward? We into being, “Since it is almost impos- landscape. Fires burn living things into can see the artistic/scientific answer to sible to understand them as they were metal sculptural skeletons while a huge that question in Matthew Ritchie’s then; as infinite points, bound in an wire ball – an atomic model of some multimedia works. The objects he indecomposable continuum, let’s look chemical – rolls over everything. In this creates are monumental and extremely at them as they would become. They vision the world remains, but without exciting. were so many and they had waited for humans, a very sad conclusion. Ritchie started to think about the so long. Their bodies interleaved as However, it doesn’t feel sad watching it universe and its possible artistic closely as pages in a book, they slipped while listening to the music of Bryce representation in the 1990s by merging and slid in and out of each other, all Dessner with Shara Worden’s vocals, physics, art, mythology, philosophy, through the endless day of the begin- sometimes ethereal, sometimes religion and history. His starting point ning, inside the heart of naked singular- beautifully baroque, sometimes just a was that science is the new art as well ity. It was before years, before history, complicated composition of noise that as the new religion, creating multiple before time: it was the whole universe; could be the sound of parallel parallel mythologies: cosmogonies. the birth, the hope, the blame; the universes. Ritchie makes the viewer Ritchie creates a spectacular visual dream, the betrayal, the revenge: think about all the possible complexities world, guiding us through the stories of waiting inside one tiny, hot, little dot.” of life: physical, biological and socio- the beginning and the end. He says Ritchie thinks that the world is ecological.

dART INTERNATIONAL FALL /W INTER 2012 15 Ritchie started his career in map. The paintings of The Hard Way ness into science. The Morning Line , London as a painter with drawing as (1996) were among the first in which among others, is an excellent example his base, but after moving to New York Ritchie used this map to create a of how Ritchie transforms his scientific he expanded his work to include mythology of gods fighting over the ideas into art. sculptures, digital images, light boxes, creation of Earth. The Morning Line , a sonic, Gothic- musical compositions, creative writing Ritchie stated that he wanted to like temple, is an imposing 10 meters and structures that function as break away from linear storytelling and high and 20 meters long, built of 20 architecture. In 1995, in an interview create a more structured and formulaic tons of black-coated aluminium, with Owen Drolet, Ritchie described his narrative, a scientifically correct intended to draw in the expanding working model. It consists of seven mythology as a base for his complex universe that surrounds us. Ritchie vertical and horizontal rows that include visual stories. He knows physics very started it all with black and white physics equations, colours, characters, well. In 2009, he was the only artist drawings that evolved into something emotions and other typically human invited to speak to an audience of really large (The Shapes of Space , characteristics, and physical properties Nobel laureates discussing Einstein’s Guggenheim Museum, New York, of the universe. The equations line the theories and how they can be applied 2004). The Universal Cell and Remote top and the colours are listed vertically. in the twenty-first century. According to Viewing (2006) was his next step into a Each shape can correspond to each the laws of physics, we only recognize truly three-dimensional structure. colour, which in turn can represent one reality, and its outcomes can be Ritchie collected all possible data about seven different groupings of three: predicted. Edward Lorenz's “Butterfly the human cell, the sacred unit of our character, emotion/human effect,” the idea that the “flapping of a measurement, and about prison cells. characteristics, and physical property. butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a He recognized that everything is This matrix gives the artist 49 possible tornado in Texas,” made chaos theory designed around a geometrical pattern. different combinations that he calls a popular, bringing the idea of random- He saw a similarity between our

16 dART INTERNATIONAL FALL /W INTER 2012 Matthew Ritchie, Monstrance , 2011, projected multi-channel, film vinyl and animation. L&M Arts, Los Angeles, November 2, 2011-January 14, 2012 ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of L&M Arts, Los Angeles. imprisonment in our genetic makeup involved design innovators various voices about different situations. and real prisons. He made several Aranda/Lasch, the Music Research Above all this is the music: classical different drawings of all these things Centre of York University and Arup pieces mixed with sounds created by and then layered the semi-transparent AGU to create a fully programmable, the structure itself or composed by papers on top of each other until they three-dimensional, moveable sculpture. contemporary musicians inspired by the created a kind of information tunnel. In From his drawings, they designed a sculpture and improvised on site. The the end, he scanned them into the structure in which each part can be Morning Line is also sensitive to time, computer and created the final image, replicated at a smaller and smaller scale street noise, you and other visitors, so which he sent to a metal-shop to be cut until it reaches a nanospectrum. From you can never have the same light and out and assembled. The final product is there on you can build anything. Ritchie sound effect twice. It is a complex, an amazing structure which captures calls it a quantum building, because amazing and really universal experience. not only the dimensions of space but its one piece (a tetrahedron) can support It has been installed in three very moving energies as well. Ritchie’s 22 other smaller ones and so on to specific sites: the Andalusian Center for artistic goal was no less ambitious than infinity. With this method you can Contemporary Art, Seville, in 2008; to represent the entire universe, as well “build a cathedral which involves the Eminönü Square, Istanbul, in 2010; and as our beliefs and knowledge about it. universe.” the Schwarzenbergplatz, Vienna, in His approach is philosophical, involving The structure of The Morning Line 2011. religion, occult practices and scientific is amazing. Standing in it is a once-in-a- Ritchie participated in two principles. As he said in an interview, he lifetime artistic experience. You can see performances as stage designer. In the wants to “describe the whole spectrum the sky, but what you are really looking summer of 2009, Hypermusic Prologue, of experience, simultaneously.” at is the metal curves drawn on the sky. A Projective Opera in Seven Planes , The idea in The Morning Line is There is a glass wall as part of the debuted in Paris then was performed “drawing in space,” and Ritchie aims to structure, and on it images of the again in 2010 at the Guggenheim in make his drawings stand in space and universe and apocalyptic videos are New York. Ritchie also worked on The become a part of the universe. Ritchie projected. You hear stories told by Long Count (Brooklyn Academy of

dART INTERNATIONAL FALL /W INTER 2012 17 Music, Next Wave Festival, 2009; Hollywood’s myths: The Fallen Star . place and music played. There were Holland Festival, 2010; Barbican Arts At the gallery entrance, there were also four paintings of monsters in this Centre, London, 2012), a 70-minute eight paintings of golden angels. gallery, and their dots showed the multimedia piece. Ritchie sets the scene These hybrids of feathered humans position of constellations on October by projecting an apocalyptic video on and gaseous nebula represented 31, Halloween. They represented three giant screens that envelope the “high energy states,” such as solar “negative energy states,” such as terror musicians on stage. These hallucinatory storms, pole dancers and female attacks, ecological disasters, surgery videos show whole trees uprooted and athletes. The figures were accompanied and video games. In this show, Ritchie other “mad tales of creation and by dots showing the position of combined all his previous artistic resurrection.” constellations over Los Angeles on the elements – drawing, painting, sculpture, While The Morning Line tries to opening day, November 2, 2011, the video projection, sound effect and reconstruct the universe in a physical Feast of All Souls. The lone sculpture in performance – to create a meaningful way, Monstrance , Ritchie’s recently the gallery could be the figure of a and complex view of the specific site of closed show at L & M Arts in Venice fallen angel, or, more likely, what is left the gallery and its place in the universe. Beach, Los Angeles, returns to of him after falling from the sky. The Ritchie said that in the work of mythological interpretation. east gallery was a very different world, painters like David Salle and Julian Monstrance , meaning “show” in Latin, a dark one, more like a subterranean Schnabel he saw the last of the is a ritual vessel from the medieval cave at the beginning of time. There generation of artists who had to follow period for the public display of relics. In were water pools projected on the “the master narrative of the West.” the performance at the opening, a floor, their reflections on the walls. For him that means a new artistic era masked singer represented the many Prehistoric drawings covered the has begun, and he is set free to go off forms of sun, including the setting sun. ground, interrupted by meteorite-like and start his own quest into the The show was also about one of sculptures, while images floated in universe.

Matthew Ritchie, Monstrance, , 2011, opening performance on November 2, 2011. L&M Arts, Los Angeles, November 2, 2011 – January 14, 2012. ©Matthew Ritchie. Courtesy of L&M Arts, Los Angeles

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