'--'h Ma t thew R i I ch ie N ot Two, N ot Three, N ot Even Four Dimensions C A Y SOPHIE RABINOWITZ In the gallery entrance hangs a wall-size, multi-pan­ made up of various elements, specific details become eled light box that illuminates drawings of diagrams, cumulative wholes—fractals and ecologies. Like the symbols, characters, and visual fragments. With deic­ ecologist who probes the relations and interactions tic arrows made in black marker and liquefied color between organisms and their environment, includ­ that appears to flow from one panel to the next, sem­ ing other organisms, Ritchie’s stratified and interlac­ blances of a sequential ordering intimate that some ing forms and figures reevaluate the potential for vi­ linear logic is embedded in this convoluted imagery. sual art to reflect both its own character and that of Expressive cartoon characters seem animated. In the tangential subjects. main gallery large hard-edged forms painted on can­ What begins as a play of perspective, disclosing vas in dated varieties of muted pastel colors surround the potential for variegated points of view (concur­ a fractured plastic mural that cascades onto the floor. rently textual and pictorial) ultimately offers insight M ATTHEW RITCHIE, THE FAST SET, 2000, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art, One cannot cross the space or circulate around the into the nature and culture of information. Ritchie Miami, March 31 - June 25 / DIE SCHNELLE MENGE. (PHOTO: TIM McPHEE) sculpture as usual; instead one moves around part of hypothesizes an extended model for understanding the work, which is a painting on the floor and also a a work of art in space that is neither two- nor three- sculpture. This reorientation becomes the first of (not even four-) dimensional. As stories, the works many prismatic encounters. need no beginning, middle or end, because each in­ Ritchie’s cross-media activity can be seen to deny sight or understanding convenes around a conflu­ the by-now-traditional conventions of installation art ence of information sources. Preceding double page / Vorangehende Doppelseite: where the specific detail or purpose is sacrificed for Herein painting, building, and writing switch M ATTHEW RITCHIE, M THEORY, 2000, oil and marker on canvas, detail / an overall “spectacle.” In his installations, which are identities and collapse into the same vehicle, but not M-THEORIE, Öl und Filzschreiber auf Leinwand, Ausschnitt. (PHOTO: OREN SLOR) P A R K E T T 61 2 001 138 139 Matthew Ritchie Matthew Ritchie as a mere literary experience of painting or vice tions, what Ritchie calls “folded narratives laid on versa. In Ritchie’s work these otherwise segregated myth,” the stories collapse all ideologies and schools disciplines occupy the same dimension. A text can be of thought. So Emmett does not only refer to Hebrew composed of multiple simultaneously occurring tradition, this swimmer also represents the character events in a painting and a painting can be composed ABRAXAS, a so-called, “gnostic demon of infinity,” of events that took place over a period of time even origin of the word abracadabra used in magical disap­ though they exist now as a single image. His project pearing acts and another ancient name for god. Em­ employs seven representational modes to overlap, dis­ mett returns to a primary narrative state as he drowns close, and reveal each other: drawing, photography, and regresses down the evolutionary scale becoming sculpture, wall painting, painting on canvas, pub­ part of the marine ecosystem, which is the closest lished text, and digital media. Each process presents thing to infinity on earth. As water, he becomes an itself as a radical interpretation ready for reinterpre­ active ingredient in the story, able to turn inorganic tation to acknowledge that the relationship between a matter into living material. However, this quality is work (or any part of a work) and its interpretation is missing from the landlocked Morris, who, by the way, not parasitic but rather symbiotic. is trapped in the basement of the Eden Roc Hotel, While literary critics continue to worry about what named for the Philosopher’s Stone so avidly sought interpretive analysis of a story might do to our un­ by Ponce de Leon on his visit to Florida—where this derstanding of it, they repeatedly mistake the nature whole story takes place. Finally, we may not be sur­ of interpretation. An interpretation cannot purely prised to discover that the Eden Roc Hotel was built expose, indict, debunk or enhance, deepen or mag­ by—the once ignored, now lauded—Morris Lapidus, nify our appreciation of a story because interpreta­ whose last name means stone. tions end up being more stories—stories about A critical reading of Matthew Ritchie’s work must stories—meta-stories. This is also true of the multiple differentiate between seeing it as a set of interpreta­ salvaged and cross-referenced forms and genres tive adventures that merely confirm the continued Ritchie employs: abstract painting, autobiography, existence of a ready-made subject and an under­ pulp fiction, installation art/scatter art, representa­ standing of interpretation as a site for the subject’s tional draftsmanship, hard science, etc. Just as James perpetual construction and dissolution. Extending Clifford writes about the ethnographic version of this all insight, be it in science or art, from personal ex­ phenomenon, “a practice in which narrative fiction perience, the artist throws himself into this process continually refers to another pattern of ideas or of radical interpretation. By “assuming the role of an events,”1* one level of m eaning in any text will always observing subject who is himself both the historical generate other levels. As such, any story has a product and the site of certain practices, techniques, propensity to generate another story to repeat and institutions, and procedures of subjectification,”3* displace some prior story. Ritchie challenges both art making and narrative In Ritchie’s most recent publication, The Slow Tide conventions. (2000), an elderly swimmer named Emmett takes his name from the Hebrew word E m et meaning truth, which the artist claims, “is the word you need to acti­ vate a golem or the word that produces life and MATTHEW RITCHIE, PARENTS AND CHILDREN, 2000, Duraclear Lambda prints in lightbox, 180 x 120”, reverses the thermodynamic tendency toward en­ 1) Ja m e s C lifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century installation detail, Andrea Rosen Gallery, Nexu York / ELTERN UND KINDER, Prints auf Klarsichtfolie in Leuchtkasten, tropy, in other words, one of the names of god.”2* His Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer­ Teil der Installation, 45 7 x 305 cm. (PHOTO: OREN SLOR) counterpart is “Morris,” a golem locked in a thermo­ sity Press, 1998). dynamic end game pursuing a third character, the 2) Matthew Ritchie’s statements quoted in this text are from Actress, who represents Energy. She in turn is pursu­ conversations with the author. 3) Jonathan Crary, Techniques of an Observer: On Vision and Moder­ ing another character, the Astronaut, and so on. With nity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), characters whose origins stem from competing tradi­ P-5- 140 141 Ma / / h e w R il eh ie N icht zwei, NICHT DREI, NICHT EINMAL VIER Dimensionen C A Y SOPHIE RABINOWITZ Im Eingangsbereich der Galerie hängt eine wand­ Ritchies Medien übergreifendes Schaffen scheint grosse Leuchtbox, die in mehrere Felder unterteilt ist sich den mittlerweile traditionellen Konventionen und Zeichnungen von Diagrammen, Symbolen, einer Installationskunst zu verweigern, die spezifi­ Schriftzeichen und visuellen Fragmenten zeigt. sche Einzelheiten oder Ziele dem «Gesamt-Spekta­ Mit schwarzem Markerstift gezeichnete Pfeile und kel» opfert. In seinen aus verschiedenen Elementen Farbe, die buchstäblich von einem Feld ins nächste zusammengesetzten Installationen werden die spezi­ zu fliessen scheint, erwecken den Anschein einer fischen Einzelheiten zu kumulativen Ganzen - zu geordneten Abfolge und legen nahe, dass dieser ver­ Fraktalen und ökologischen Systemen. Wie ein Öko­ schlungenen Bilderwelt eine lineare Logik inne­ loge, der die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Lebewe­ wohnt. Expressive Comicfiguren scheinen sich zu sen und ihrer Umwelt erforscht, zu der auch andere bewegen. Im Hauptraum der Galerie ergiesst sich ein Lebewesen gehören, unterzieht Ritchie mit seinen zerbrochenes plastisches Wandbild - umrahmt von vielschichtig ineinander übergreifenden Formen grossen, scharf konturierten, in altmodisch gedämpf­ und Figuren das Potenzial der bildenden Kunst, so­ ten Pastelltönen auf Leinwand gemalten Formen - wohl ihr eigenes Wesen als auch das angrenzender kaskadengleich auf den Boden. Man kann den Raum Themen wiederzugeben, einer kritischen Prüfung. nicht wie üblich durchqueren oder um die Skulptur Was als Spiel mit Perspektiven beginnt und dabei herum gehen, sondern bewegt sich um einen Teil des vielfältige (zugleich sprachliche und malerische) Be­ Werks herum, das ein auf den Boden gemaltes Bild trachtungsmöglichkeiten aufzeigt, bietet schliesslich und eine Skulptur zugleich ist. Diese Neuausrichtung einen Einblick in Natur und Kultur der Information. ist aber nur die erste von zahlreichen prismatischen Ritchie schafft als Hypothese ein erweitertes Modell Begegnungen, die folgen werden. für das Verstehen eines Kunstwerks im Raum, das October 21 - November 25 / ELTERN UND KINDER, Acryl und Filzschreiber auf Wand, Lackfarbe aufSintra