“THIS IS THE TWENTY-SECOND PUBLICATION PRODUCED UNDER THE IMPRIMATUR OF BLUE BOOK ISSUES. THE ARTIST GUARANTEES THE PERIODIC RELEASE OF AN ORIGINAL BLUE BOOK. A SECOND PRINTING WILL NOT BE AUTHORIZED DURING THE ARTIST’S LIFETIME.”
So reads the colophon found on the last page of Dr. Dogwit’s Last Lecture At Etemenanki, the most recent work in artist Gary Richman’s Blue Book Issues series. True to his word, Richman has indeed been reliably sharing new Blue Books since the early 90’s, and Printed Matter has been distributing them for nearly that long.
Printed Matter is pleased to present an in-store exhibition of Richman’s artists’ books. Richman’s work is characterized by surreal combination: black and white collages of 50’s-style diagrammatic images, original line drawings, and found photographs interact with text that is direct and bold not only in voice but also in visual presentation, often printed in serif type, all capitals, or both. Images and text drawn from or referencing an authoritative context have their power undermined by Richman’s unique collaging sensibility; individually, images and phrases remain striking, but when presented in combination, viewers are compelled to draw connections and extract their own meanings. The assemblages may seem at once stream-of-consciousness and carefully constructed, random yet woven intricately by the artist with a specific but inaccessible meaning in mind. Ultimately, how we choose to read Richman’s work says as much about our own individual consciousnesses as it does about the work itself. In the artist’s own words, “Content is always construed, translated and often condemned to misapprehension. Like Santayana’s beauty in the eye of the beholder, it is sometimes coincidental but not entirely unintended.”
Above all, Gary Richman’s Blue Book Issues promise to be entertaining, their mysteries begging to be decoded and their imagery humorous and disturbing. In his most recent volume, Dr. Dogwit’s Last Lecture At Etemenanki, a trademark authoritative voice addresses, in all-caps, an attentive audience pictured at the bottom of every page. Imagery of copulation, babies and genitalia, among other things, create physical distance between the fictional lecture and its recipients.
Richman, on his work: Making art is an ongoing and sustained sequence of provisional conjectures. My image making exploits the collage process because it is the most efficient, unconstrained and unbiased means of aesthetic evaluation. Visual presentiments build on each other and extenuate. The result is more than the sum of its component intuitions.
In my paintings, form, color, pattern and autonomous markings create a surface of geometric harmonies and painterly dissonances. They have the requisite power of language. In my books, the power of images is subjected to the elusive validity of words. I seek a personal vernacular that avoids insular self-indulgence yet permits me to engage in the general discourse of contemporary art, a voice that is subtle yet insistent enough to maintain a tangential connection to the “real world”.
I want to bring a global range of visual elements from disparate cultures and diverse times together – without addressing hermeneutical peculiarities, without implying doctrinal associations and without evaluating traditional exegeses. Content is always construed, translated and often condemned to misapprehension. Like Santayana’s beauty in the eye of the beholder, it is sometimes coincidental but not entirely unintended.
Click here to see a table of featured books.