Richard Rezac

About

On view at the gallery’s Chelsea location will be a selection of works that demonstrate the breadth of Rezac’s sculptural practice including floor, wall, and ceiling pieces. Recalling familiar forms, the works engage our memory and inspire material associations, while eluding easy recognition. This will be the artist’s first exhibition with Luhring Augustine; it also marks his first show in New York in over a decade.    

Rezac’s abstract sculptures are rooted in a studious consideration of the history of art, architecture, and design. Originally trained as a painter, Rezac has said that his work “behaves like a painting”, the sculptures hovering in a place between representation and direct presentation, existing simultaneously as both images and objects. His background in painting is also apparent in his masterful use of color, which is a touchstone of his oeuvre – the palette he chooses for each work is at times bold and vibrant, at others subtle and natural in tone.

The sculptures quietly connote everyday sources, leaving the viewer with a sense of familiarity and closeness.  Exceptionally precise in their execution, with each decision carefully considered by Rezac, the sculptures are made to be looked at and thought of with absorption. Their human scale and careful placement (the height on the wall, the distance they hang from the ceiling, etc.) initiates a dialogue that demands time, the works revealing themselves slowly. This combination of exquisite craft and spatial intentionality imparts a knowing presence to the sculptures, lending an ostensible sense that they are full of concealed information. Taciturn, earnest, and magnetic, they toggle between congruence and dissonance, space and form, lightness and solidity.