October 28–December 4, 2004
Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to present Ricci Albenda's Cyclidrome. The artist's first exhibition of paintings since 1999, Cyclidrome continues the development of his COLOR-I-ME TRY alphabetic colorization system. The original COLOR-I-ME- TRY system maps the alphabet onto the natural spectrum and uses magenta, a nonspectral color, to represent numbers and punctuation and to create a color wheel. Every word represented using this system then has its own distinct color pattern.
For Cyclidrome, Albenda has taken this full color system, which he sees as largely utopian, and expanded its functionality to accommodate real-world media. He has developed it into a series of monochromatic palettes that correspond to his vowel hues in the basic system; a – red, e – orange, i – yellow, o – green, u – blue, and (sometimes) y – purple. Each new palette retains the original hue identities of the basic COLOR-I-ME-TRY system, albeit through a color filter of that palette's defining hue.
The term cyclidrome is one coined by the artist, and is an analog to the term palindrome. Literally translating as "running in a circle" (palindrome: "running again"), the cyclidrome is manifest in the pattern of each painting: the letters run around the color wheel either clockwise of counterclockwise, with somewhat even spacing. (The cyclidrome is a far more subjective phenomenon than the palindrome, and relies on the experience of its color pattern.) The installation as a whole is itself also a cyclidrome. The paintings are arranged in a circuit that represents the color wheel.
Albenda's
word paintings have always relied on the power of the familiar. The harmonies
wrought into these works seem to capture the platonic essence of their subjects.
This essence, not so much eternal as generated by experience, is currently
limited to the colorless forms of letters and words. COLOR-I-ME-TRY in universal
use would introduce familiar color patterns in association with each word,
making every word more like a picture, giving more richness to the act of
reading and a stronger visceral connection to the written word.
Initially conceived as a utopian fantasy, Albenda's COLOR-I-ME-TRY is increasingly
motivated by an earnest vision of its implementation. To this end, he has
created the paintings and color palettes on view in Cyclidrome.
The exhibition will be on view from October 28th through December 4th, 2004.
A reception will be held for the artist in the gallery on October 28th from
6 - 8 PM at 516 West 20th St., New York City. For information call 212-741-8849.
TESSERACT
January 27-March 3, 2001
Ricci
Albenda's second exhibition at the Andrew Kreps Gallery, Tesseract, functions
from many points of view figuratively and literally. It is futuristic, both
in a nostalgic sense with its somewhat satirical reference to 50's utopianism,
and in a contemporary sense, seemingly emerging spontaneously from a digital
file. It is also classical, an earnest study of subjective perception, optics,
and spatial imagination. In this sense its reality is defined by the intimate
relationship between the architecture and its occupants. The show can be seen
as consisting solely of space itself. The gallery is conceived as a single
four dimensional solid (a tesseract). A tesseract, or hyper-cube, is the four
dimensional analog to a cube, a cube being the three dimensional analog to
a square. (i.e. A square is to a cube as a cube is to a tesseract). The large
cube suspended in the center of the gallery is just one of eight cubes which
comprise the tesseract (in the way that six sides comprise a cube). The gallery
itself is another. The remaining six are not physically present, but occupy
the spaces between opposing faces of the inner and outer cube. Imagine a two
dimensional drawing of its three dimensional analog, the cube. Notice how
the dotted lines in the drawing below help to define four of the sides of
an ordinary cube:
This drawing of a cube is, notably similar to the top view of the exhibition
(as well as to the cross section).
The center cube then is theoretically no smaller than the cube of the gallery
space. Its' smallness is rather a matter of perspective. It is further away
along a fourth dimensional vector. Since our three dimensional space does
not allow a fourth perpendicular axis, a vanishing point has been imagined
in the center of the gallery which represents an infinite distance in that
fourth perpendicular direction. The six other cubes comprising the tesseract
are implied by the juxtaposition of the two material cubes (the suspended
one, and the gallery itself) and by a series of spatial perturbations which
unfold throughout the installation.
Portals (to another dimension) are non-Euclidean representations of architectural spaces which pinch off of the existing architecture, emerging seemingly spontaneously from the walls, as if they were natural phenomena (hence the hurricane-like naming). Similar in logic to that of a fisheye lens view, these reliefs represent a near total field of vision. The flat wall space surrounding the pieces represent the small fraction of the space which moves out toward the exceedingly wide periphery, and behind the observer.
Annexes
append existing walls, or corners, opening up additional rooms where conventional
annexes could not. These architectural forced perspective reliefs differ from
the portals in that they do not represent a (nearly) 360° angle of vision
(as with a fisheye lens) and so do not represent a (nearly) complete visual
field. Annexes are based on a simple point-of-view idea, without the angle-of-view
idea central to the portals. This point-of-view logic informs the specific
idiosyncrasies of the tesseract as well: The ceiling and hence the imagined
horizon line are on a significant tilt, and the top view of the gallery is
not square (see drawing). Architecturally speaking, both plan and section
contain tilted planes, coordinated to work together to form an integrated
whole.
Scale shifts, spatial distortions, and optical illusions collaborate to convey
a sense of otherworldliness, not only in the sense that one has entered this
other world, but that this place is really just a point of contact with a
much larger world which moves beyond not only the confines of the gallery,
but beyond the limitations of our imagination.
The exhibition will be on view from January 27- March 3, 2001. A reception will be held for the artist in the gallery on January 27 from 6-8 PM at 516 West 20th St., New York City. For information call 212-741-8849.
The
Wave/Particle Project +
Portals To Other Dimensions
March 7-April 4, 1998
The Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to present Ricci Albenda's Wave/Particle Project and Portals to Other Dimensions.
The Wave/Particle Project is a series of perspectivally distorted word paintings on aluminum panels that have two modes of installation. Particles (discrete, local) are simply hung on the wall. Levels are inset, conferring upon them an autonomy, almost a consciousness: they are like sense organs. In this installation the works are manifest as Waves (continuous, non-local) the panels are set flush into the wall. The works float elusively in an undefined white field; autonomy dissolves.
A word seen enters the mind immediately, sometimes sneakily (usually in signage), and is given form by the thought of speaking it. It can stand forth as a monolith, a locus of power, a voice booming or cooing from the other, particle-like. It can also get stuck in your head like a pop song, wave-like.
The Portals, plaster reliefs which feed into the walls of the spaces on which they intervene, function only metaphorically as portals to other dimensions. Really, they are representations of other dimensions, that is, of architectural spaces in other worlds with different geometries. Like little universes pinching off our own. For the portals, parity is key; every portal has both a positive and a negative form, but much like the doppelganger or like a linked pair of photons, its counterparts remain correlated even when separated by large distances.
Entering the gallery we are confronted by a large portal reminiscent, fittingly, of Le Corbusier's Ronchamps Cathedral. Albenda is in many ways an architect here, reconfiguring the gallery with perspective and scale in the Wave/Particle Project and appending it with Portals. Moving through the space, our position must constantly be reassessed in relation to the spatially skewed works surrounding us. An opening, a metaportal, actually, leads us to another world where everything is negative: words are mirror imaged, portals inverted so that hollows replace volumes. This strange positive/negative other-world ironically turns our attention back on ourselves. The appearance of the paintings and of the portals is contingent upon oneís angle of view, drawing attention to our own bodies as we move through space. The work is installed along an imaginary horizon line which is actually on a slight tilt, a subtle assault on the inner ear. The tilt has the egalitarian effect of allowing a whole range of people to find a spot (actually a line) in the gallery where their eyes intersect the eye-level plane of the exhibition. Minor alterations of the galleryís detailing reinforce the skew, to some extent warping the entire space, bringing us back to the portals, the words and the idea of Albenda as architect.
The exhibition will be on view from March 7- April 4 1998. A reception will be held for the artist in the gallery March 7 from 6-8PM at 529 West 20th St., New York. For information call 212-741-8849
