RICO GATSON

RICO GATSON

SPECTRAL VISIONS

8 DECEMBER 2022 - 28 JANUARY 2023
MILES MCENERY GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT AN EXHIBITION OF RECENT WORK BY RICO GATSON, TITLED SPECTRAL VISIONS. THE ARTIST'S SECOND SOLO SHOW OPENS 8 DECEMBER 2022 AT 515 WEST 22ND STREET AND WILL REMAIN ON VIEW THROUGH 28 JANUARY 2023. Accompanying the exhibition is A FULLY ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE FEATURING AN ESSAY BY SIDDHARTHA MITTER.
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New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, ‘Rico Gatson: Spectral Visions,’ 8 December 2022 - 28 January 2023
Image: Christopher Burke Studio. Courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY
"This work is energy work. It is why Gatson holds fast to this modest studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which he has kept for years, with its window that he likens to a readymade. It is why he composes multiple paintings at once, not as a series but as an organism, a whole. 'I want there to be dialogue between things in space,' he says. 'There is a vibration.'"

- Siddhartha Mitter in "Undeniable Energy"
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Double Consciousness), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 48 inches

91.4 x 121.9 cm
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Expanded Light Consciousness II), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 80 inches

91.4 x 203.2 cm
RIco Gatson Studio 2022, Brooklyn, NY
"It’s high summer, and Gatson is working on the new paintings for this exhibition. The stereo plays Coltrane—John today, but Alice is also a favorite. The space is compact—not crowded so much as full, with works set close to one another. Those nearer to completion hang or rest against the wall. Those in earlier stages lay flat on tables and trestles. He has identified the form they will take and established the lines of the composition, but the colors are still hypotheses, some simply tentative letter codes jotted on the surface. They will find their values in the making."

- Siddhartha Mitter in "Undeniable Energy"
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Four Winds), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 48 inches

91.4 x 121.9 cm
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Luminous Bodies I), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 80 inches

91.4 x 203.2 cm
An alignment of tall, pointed triangles carries, of course, a jarring connotation in American history, and in one work, Untitled (Luminous Bodies I), two areas in a particular pink— a new entrant in his palette—propose an explicit nod to Philip Guston’s Klan paintings. 'Guston is someone I think about a lot, in terms of painting, though I’m working in purely geometrical forms,' Gatson says. I ask him to elaborate. 'Because he was flawed, human and radical in how he changed,' Gatson answers. 'He made his best work in those last ten years. He was shunned for it, ostracized—and it’s indelible. It’s powerful and poignant work. It’s loose, it’s poetry. I’m not saying that’s happening for me, but there are these forms.'”

- Siddhartha Mitter in "Undeniable Energy"
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Luminous Bodies II), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 80 inches

91.4 x 203.2 cm
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Magic Diamonds II), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 80 inches

91.4 x 203.2 cm
Rico Gatson Studio 2022, Brooklyn, NY
"Triangles and inverted triangles, circles of various diameters, vertical or horizontal stripes in negative space, aligned segments, remain his favored graphical tactics to organize the field. But new things are happening. The overlaps have grown more intense, their geometries more involved. The color decisions are intuitive and irregular. New forms are birthed in the vortex. Some are implicit, relying for their manifestation on the play of optics, the mind’s eye. Others are right there in the design. They break and tumble across the surface. Getting loose. Getting free."

- Siddhartha Mitter in "Undeniable Energy"
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Magic Star I), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 48 inches

91.4 x 121.9 cm
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Malcolm In The Spirit), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 80 inches

91.4 x 203.2 cm
Rico Gatson Studio 2022, Brooklyn, NY
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Seven Panels), 2022

Acrylic paint on wood, in seven parts

Overall dimensions: 96 1/4 x 128 1/2 inches

244.5 x 326.4 cm

Each panel: 96 1/4 x 11 1/2 inches

244.5 x 29.2 cm
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Spectral Visions), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 80 inches

91.4 x 203.2 cm
"Other motifs also track to histories of violence and resistance—concentric circles have their origin in the idea of the target, for instance. Now they are cosmic targets, Gatson says, set loose by the fractal release in their overlapping rings. 'I’m usually responding to something real and actually in the world,' he says, 'but on a subconscious level.' The central paired elements that mirror but never quite touch in Untitled (Spectral Visions) appeared to him in a half-waking state one morning, holding back just short of a direct reference. They seemed to allude to islands in space, he says, or to keys—again the doors of perception—again passage and gateway."

- Siddhartha Mitter in "Undeniable Energy"
RICO GATSON

Untitled (Triple Consciousness), 2022

Acrylic paint and glitter on wood

36 x 80 inches

91.4 x 203.2 cm
Rico Gatson, Maya Angelou Beacon, 167th St Subway Station, Bronx, NY

"His work that has enjoyed the broadest public reach is his long-running Icons series, which he initiated in 2007. It is celebratory—a contrast to his more somber subject matter, on one level, but also a response to it, attentive to the dialectics of history. These luminous pieces in pencil, each honoring a major figure in Black culture, music, politics, or social history, are less portraits than, again, energy studies. He renders each by appropriation of a black-and-white archival photograph that he places near the paper’s edge, and from which impeccable beams of color radiate across the page. In his permanent installation for the 167th Street subway station (located at 167th Street and Grand Concourse), eight of these Icons, all with ties to the Bronx, grace the platform wall in glass mosaic."

- Siddhartha Mitter in "Undeniable Energy"
Rico Gatson, James Baldwin Beacon, 167th St Subway Station, Bronx, NY
- Rico Gatson
  Bell, 2022
  Color pencil and photograph collage on paper
  22 1/8 x 30 1/8 inches
  56/2 x 76.5 cm
- Rico Gatson
  Cicely, 2022
  Color pencil and photograph collage on paper
  22 x 30 inches
  55.9 x 76.2 cm
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Installation of "Fred S.," Rico Gatson: Wall to Wall, 2022, The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
- Rico Gatson
  Don, 2022
  Color pencil and photograph collage on paper
  22 x 30 inches
  55.9 x 76.2 cm
- Rico Gatson
  Elbert, 2022
  Color pencil and photograph collage on paper
  22 x 30 14 inches
  55.9 x 76.8 cm
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- Rico Gatson
  Isaac, 2022
  Color pencil and photograph collage on paper
  22 1/8 x 30 1/8 inches
  56.2 x 76.5 cm
- Rico Gatson
  Sidney, 2022
  Color pencil and photograph collage on paper
  22 x 30 inches
  55.9 x 76.2 cm
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Rico Gatson Studio 2022, Brooklyn, NY
Rico Gatson in his Studio, 2022

Rico Gatson (b. 1966 in Augusta, GA) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bethel College in 1989 and his Master of Fine Arts from Yale School of Art in 1991.

Gatson has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY (forthcoming); Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Scott Miller Projects, Birmingham, AL; Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, MN; Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York, NY; Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Samsøñ Projects, Boston, MA; Studio 10, Brooklyn, NY; Wright Museum of Art, Beloit College, Beloit, WI; Exit Art, New York, NY; and the Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery at Bennington College, Bennington, VT.

His work has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, MI; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Dieu Donné, New York, NY; The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space, New York, NY; Essl Museum, Vienna, Austria; Jewish Museum, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and La Viellie Chartié, Marseille, France.

His work is included in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN; Denver Art Museum, Denver CO; Kempner Museum, Kansas City, MO; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Malcolm X Institute, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC; Peter Norton Family Foundation, Santa Monica, CA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.

He is the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award for Visual Artists; Prized Pieces Video Award from the National Black Programming Consortium; Oil Bar Ltd. Award for Excellence in Sculpture from Yale School of Art; and the Pew Charitable Trust Graduate Fellowship.

Gatson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
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- Rico Gatson
  Sidney, 2022
  Color pencil and photograph collage on paper
  22 x 30 inches
  55.9 x 76.2 cm
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RICO GATSON: Spectral Visions

SPECTRAL VISIONS

8 DECEMBER 2022 - 28 JANUARY 2023

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