About
An exhibition of Bruce Richards’ work is akin to the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, a dense collection of art historical objects, sculptures, and architectural fragments, that are obsessively, but meticulously installed, demonstrating a passion for history and its linkages to the present. In Richards' work Crossroads, from his Exquisite Corpse series, a small 19th century bust of Mars, the god of war, sits on a small shelf below an oval painting of a nuclear mushroom cloud with billowy puffs that echo the curls of Mars’ hair. In another series entitled Course of Empire, the artist references Thomas Cole’s 1837 painting Destruction, but the images are simply black tires burning in an undefined space, like an Ed Ruscha word on fire. As Richards states, his work is about visual analogies and metaphorical readings, reinvesting objects with allegory often by simply pairing one thing with another. The idea of one plus one equaling not two, but an infinite possibility of readings is a profoundly suggestive artistic practice employed by the Surrealists, as well as Richards’ fellow student at UCI in the early 70s, Alexis Smith. In fact, in a third body of work in this exhibition entitled Ex Libris, pays homage to some of Richards’ art heroes through finely crafted basswood sculptures of art history books. Those of us from the pre-digital age who saw their first Magritte in a book, have a tactile affinity with the shape and feel of books, the curves of the open pages, and the smell of paper and libraries. These book sculptures, each with a single illustration, or “plate,” reference not only art history, but a personal and intimate discovery.
