DANIEL RICH
Photo by Martin Mueller
Daniel Rich creates large-scale paintings of architecture that highlight the political and social narratives embedded into the designs. In this interview, he discusses how he came to be interested in the symbolic ways that architecture can represent societies, how investigative journalism influences the creation of his pieces, his beginnings as an artist, and the unprecedented challenges artists now face from the pandemic and climate crisis.
Interview by Isabel Hou
On your site, you write that you are “interested in the highly symbolic role architecture plays in politics and its power to function as an icon of our lived experience…whose features manifest where society is at one particular moment in history.” How did this come to be? What is the personal drive behind your work?
Looking back, the events of September 11th, 2001, and the lead up to the Iraq War in 2003 which coincided with my graduate studies, had a profound impact on me and my work. I began following politics and world events much more closely as information became more readily available through the Internet. I had already been working with subject matter revolving around history, time, and place but these ideas were very undeveloped and personal. In response to 9/11, I began painting architecture for its ability to act as a signifier, its role as the backdrop to political ideology, and as a response to the rapidly unfolding events at the time. Paying close attention to the news and observing architecture in the photographs and television footage, led me to search for specific subjects, their respective stand-ins, or alternate versions of the structures depicted and appearing in the news stories.
Your work depicts many subjects, ranging from Beijing to Air Force 1 to Bauhaus. What do you look for when choosing what to paint?
The impetus for a painting is most often a piece of investigative journalism or a story in the news. Sometimes I just happen to come across an image that immediately jumps out at me on the cover of a newspaper for example, but I predominantly rely on Google image searches. Appropriating imagery is a very intuitive and highly selective process for me.
An image has to have the potential to be significantly changed and transformed by me for it to be chosen as a source. This mostly happens through a process of image manipulation resulting from tracing and redrawing the image by hand. I also often tweak the colors of a source image in Photoshop in order to change the mood, light, hue, or color saturation.
Tower, Houston, 2020. Acrylic on Dibond, 78 3/4 x 59 inches / 200 x 150 cm
You were born in Germany and live in Berlin. However, you attended school in the United States. Many of your exhibitions have been in the United States as well. Do you find that your international roots allow a different kind of perspective when working in the U.S.?
My background is somewhat complicated as I was born in Germany to British parents and have a British passport. Now that I have spent time back in Germany after twenty-two years in the U.S., I find myself as a foreigner in Germany again…at this point I consider myself to be somewhat of a stateless individual, which I think has informed my work from a conceptual standpoint.
Having lived and worked in the U.S. for a substantial amount of time continues to influence my work, as I still pay close attention to U.S. media sources and the political developments in the country. I do think that my background has offered me a certain perspective that has led me to make the work I do, but I think it will take more time and work for me to pinpoint what those impacts have really been.
Houston, 2019. Acrylic on Dibond, 80 x 60cm
Your style of painting is very distinct — I love the geometric shapes and bold colors! Are these elements stylistic choices, or rather a commentary on something larger?
When I first seriously began making art during my undergraduate studies, my work was heavily influenced by skateboarding, skateboard graphics of the 1980s and 90s, and painting graffiti. In undergrad I studied printmaking and did a lot of screen printing which relied on bold colors, appropriated imagery and stenciling. My favorite artists at the time were Pop Artists such as Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, and Johns.
When I went to graduate school, I was thrown out of my comfort zone and I didn’t have the same unlimited access to printmaking facilities I enjoyed during my undergrad studies. The result was that I focused exclusively on painting which led me to hard-edge geometric abstraction visually based on architectural blueprints and marcations. Born out of boredom with what I was doing, I then developed a process of breaking down pictorial imagery of architecture into geometric shapes by tracing the photograph, redrawing it, and then “reconstructing” the image by stenciling out each shape and designating it with a color. The result is a graphic reconstruction of a photograph that during its making resembles a paint by numbers system. How I paint is both a stylistic choice as well as born out of the drive and necessity to push my work forward at a crucial stage of my artistic development.
Midtown, NYC, 2020 Acrylic on Dibond 78 3/4 x 55 inches / 200 x 140cm
Your exhibitions have names like Platforms of Power (2012), Never Forever (2018), and Back to the Future (2020). These titles imply a broad, abstract point of view. On your site, you write that you try to “call attention to implicit political and social narratives,” which implies something a little subtler, a little more underlying. What role do you feel these exhibition names play in how the audience is meant to interpret your work?
Exhibition titles are the hardest part of making a show for me. I hope that the exhibition titles give the viewer a subtle hint as to how I want the group of works to be interpreted or perceived, but from experience, I know that this is a very hard thing to expect of the viewer. The title of my current exhibition Back to the Future just seemed right for some reason — we all want this pandemic to be over with as soon as possible, to move forward, and this year has at times felt darkly surreal. The paintings in my current show are very still and more devoid of the human presence than most of my prior work…I have to mention that the title Platforms of Power was not chosen by me — that one definitely does not fit with the rest of the titles I have chosen for my exhibitions.
Installation view of Back to the Future, Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, 2020
You have exhibited extensively. How do you feel you have changed, as an artist as well as a person, from your first show?
My first bigger New York gallery show coincided with the market crash of the Great Recession in 2008, and I now have a show up during the first pandemic in a hundred years…there are many ups and down and uncertainties in the life of an artist and I would be hesitant to recommend this career choice to anyone graduating bright eyed from art school as I did in 2004. I have learned that personal relationships and professional connections are very important to build and maintain. I have undoubtedly changed as a person and artist since my first show, but the feeling and satisfaction I get from making art and seeing a project come together are the same and keep me going.
Of your work, you have said, “[I] add a weirdness to the image, something that’s a little unsettling…I look at it like a Trojan Horse because the subject matter is 95% politically motivated.” (Juxtapoz) Can you talk about a particular painting where you feel this idea is best exemplified?
A piece that comes to mind is a recent small painting titled “Empty Courts, Queens NY.” At the end of March 2020, plans emerged for the US Open tennis courts at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens to be turned into a field hospital for Coronavirus patients. The painting depicts empty tennis courts at Flushing Meadows with the nets removed and an empty umpire chair. Visually the image is very pleasing because of the colors and graphic qualities of the tennis court marcations. That is what I was referring to when I mentioned the “Trojan Horse” concept to Evan Priccio of Juxtapoz — that the subject matter of the work is not necessarily overt and in-your-face but rather more subtle and underlying.
Empty Courts, Queens, NY, 2020 Acrylic on Dibond 18 1/2 x 15 3/4 inches / 47.5 x 39.5cm
All of your work is detailed, but your stadium pieces really stood out to me. I cannot imagine how difficult those were to paint. You’ve said that the large paintings usually take about two to three months to finish. As you work, there have to be times of exhaustion or frustration. What keeps you going?
There are indeed moments of fatigue and exhaustion during the making of some of the larger works. The large paintings are big commitments, but it is the anticipation of seeing the final outcome that keeps me motivated. I have made two large stadium paintings and I told myself after the first one “never again,” as the seats were excruciatingly tedious and difficult to draw and cut out because there were so many. But when I came across the source image for the Pyongyang Stadium painting I simply couldn’t refuse it.
Stadium, Pyongyang, 2018. Acrylic on Dibond, 84 x 60 inches, 213.4 x 152.4cm
You took an interesting path towards being a professional artist, from your time in Germany, to school in the U.S., to your interest and success in painting and printmaking. I think many artists, aspiring and accomplished alike, can relate to that sort of unorthodox path towards discovering their passion. However, many young artists find the prospect of becoming an “artist” daunting. What do you feel contributed to your success?
I had very supportive faculty both in undergraduate and graduate school. I went to graduate school right after undergrad and was then accepted into the residency program at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture upon graduating with my MFA. This in turn coincided with my first group show in NYC which motivated me further to move to New York and pursue a career as an artist. There were many ups and downs in the years to follow — and I made a few bad choices here and there, but in retrospect, there was always the prospect of the next opportunity or project that kept me going. I have also always maintained a very disciplined studio practice — probably to the detriment of other things I should have been pursuing…dogged persistence is how my wife would characterize it.
Unité d’Habitation, Marseille, 2019 Acrylic on Dibond 22 x 16 inches / 56 x 40.5cm
As we live through a pandemic, have you thought about how the art world will change in the years to come? Do you foresee your work changing in response to this crisis?
Unfortunately, a lot of artists are and will continue to be negatively affected by the pandemic, the economic turmoil, and political tensions. Add the recent natural disasters to the mix such as the wildfires on the West Coast of the U.S….we have some huge challenges ahead of us that need to be addressed. But I cannot begin to predict what the effects on the art world as a whole will be after the pandemic has been overcome. I think my work has already been affected by this crisis as far as the subjects and imagery I am drawn to. At the same time, my “project” continues unabated, as it is exactly these circumstances that motivate and inspire me to make the work I do.
Back to the Future is showing at the Miles McEnery Gallery in New York through October 10, 2020.
Images courtesy of the Artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York
View more of Daniel’s work on his site and Instagram
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Isabel Hou is a student and artist interested in writing, advocacy, and law. She is based out of Pennsylvania and is currently living in Colorado.
