Matt Rich: Lookout Parade

Matt Rich’s meticulous, painted paper constructions in Lookout Parade present themselves as paintings. Yet the material dynamics, process, and compositional effects employed in the works are inseparable. His thin, brightly-colored, rubbery shapes, are crafted through carefully painted and cut strips of paper joined together by linen tape. They are affixed to the wall at perfect gallery height, though, creased and torn, refuse to rest flat. The works leave the viewer in doubt as to whether the ensuing color fields are hovering in a relatively shallow space. They are punctured occasionally with white, intervening just as form, of its own accord, ceases or withdraws. Like his cut paper paintings, Rich’s small-scale gouache works are process-based, building compositions by layering colors and shapes. One senses that Rich has achieved, in these paintings, a degree of un-self-consciousness so that he does not act, but becomes part of the act that directs him, as much as he directs it.