From the Annual Report
by Dominique Nahas
James Rieck deals with the modes of address once endemic only to the corporate world, which now (he implies) are endemic to everybody. Rieck's paintings find a way to allude to the commercial art and corporate styles of the business world as a way to re-introduce a discussion of the viability of fine-arts as a cultural tool for political awareness.
His masterfully close-cropped oil paintings from annual reports are derived from corporate photography as well as from year end corporate reports paintings. There is a keen attention paid to specific types of details such as the finish of the paintings which have a sensualized, even fetishized, old-master type of resonance which seems out of character with their overall, intense neutrality. In looking at Merger, Chairman, Management, Committee we can see that Rieck takes evident care to treat the images of people depicted in corporate promotional materials as subjects re-objectified and re-subjectified through the painterly process.
James Rieck’s current exhibition of dead-panned paintings Annual Report takes its cues from the corporate world and the promotional material it generates. Commercial photography and the semiotic visual codes it follows arrives at a “commercial realism” whose purpose it is to persuade through the elision of perception and reality. Observers such as the eminent sociologist Erving Goffman have tracked these now-normatized codes of artificiality used in advertising and have enriched our collective vocabulary by popularizing such terms as “conventions of self-presentation…” and “ the stylistic ceremonies” and “behavioral displays” that are undertaken for the “ typification of the self… ” to take place. Sounds a lot like the current art world, Rieck seems to be implying through his witty and sobering work.
The artist has evidently studied and mastered the visual conventions for the presentation of the corporate-self. A field for indications and indexical signs are tweaked, given a make-over and buffed to a high shine as iconic features of body-parts, spaces and places are tailored to fit the symbolic space of the gallery show room instead of the corporate boardroom. Rieck is particularly sensitive to the re-production of signs of opulence through the measured display of textures and finishes of carpets and leather-tuffted chairs, the glints of shoes, the decorum of hands placed against crotches, the creases of pants and folds of French cuffs. That being said he is aware that his great –looking paintings on how to appear great-looking will undoubtedly be bought by the very system he is addressing. It is the ultimate paradox that his work would look entirely at home in a corporate boardroom.
Rieck is addressing his projections of the fate of most artists whose careers end by the way-side if we were to look at the large historical arc. In speculative terms appropriate equivalencies can surely be made between the needs of art world commerce to turn a profit consistently and of artmaking itself as a career whose ambitions and drives are fueled and stoked by consumer culture and that of the corporate (read “capitalist”) structure with its short-term needs, goals and gains.
Contemporary reality --- in which cultural capital and monetary capital are seen to be more synonymous with each other than ever before has to make us pause and wonder. Is this conflation the worst possible fate that could have befallen art, in a long-term manner of speaking ?
Rieck’s Annual Report series of paintings is multi-leveled. His paintings play off and work on the semiotics of dress and style of the corporate world with its decorum that is sensed through semiotics of posture and gestures. In his work Rieck pays attention to the dynamics of what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has termed habitus, a set of dispositions which generates practices and perceptions. These are deep-tissue, deeply imbedded ingrained patterns of behavior (“structured structures” is Bourdieu’s term) within the social qua corporatized body. James Rieck’s cultural work entails pointing to the illusionistic tools of the trade of commercial photography in his own painterly work, taking the ideological premises and needs of the public relations world and framing them as an allegorical setting for the degenerative condition of the contemporary art world that must be dealt with as it victimizes everyone it comes in contact with. This uneasy art world situation (presently abetted by a tremulous financial market) can be given the proper feeling tone of despairing lamentation by way of Samuel Beckett. He refers to the mirthless laugh as the “laugh of laughs…[the one that] laughs…at that which is unhappy.” So, indeed, here we are.
Dominique Nahas
© 2008
Dominque Nahas is an independent curator and critic based in Manhattan. He teaches critical studies at Pratt Institute and at the New York Studio Program. He is currently critic-in-residence at Maryland Institute College of Art’s Hoffberger Graduate School.
James Rieck
b. 1966 Pittsburg, PA
EDUCATION:
2003 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
2003 MFA. The Maryland Institute College of Art, Mount Royal School of Art
1987 The Glasgow School of Art, Scotland
1987 BFA. The Maryland Institute College of Art
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:
2008
Solo Exhibition, (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery) April, New York City
Solo Exhibition, (Dust Gallery) Sept., Los Vegas, NV
2007
PULSE Miami (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery), Miami, FL
Year '07 (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery), London, England
Preview Berlin (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery), Berlin, Germany
Farewell 511, Lyons Wier/Ortt, New York, NY
SWAB (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery), Barcelona, Spain
PULSE New York (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery), New York, NY
2006
PULSE Miami (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery), Miami, FL
Scope London (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery), London, England
Art212 (Lyons Wier/Ortt Gallery), New York, NY
Paraskavedekatriaphobia, Like the Spice Gallery, Group Show, Brooklyn, NY
The Exhibitionists, Gallery Imperato, Two Person Show, Baltimore, MD
Trawick Prize Finalists, Creative Partners Gallery, Bethesda, MD
Scope Hamptons (Lyonswier Gallery), Hamptons, NY
Bethesda Painting Award Finalists, Fraser Gallery, Bethesda, MD
Dwell, Bond, Connect, Gallery Imperato, Group Show, Baltimore, MD
PULSE New York (Lyonswier Gallery), New York, NY
Flower Girls, Solo Show, Lyonswier Gallery, New York, NY
Auto Show, Charles Campbell Gallery, Group Show, San Francisco, CA
2005
Damn Good Painting, Lyonswier Gallery, Group Show, New York, NY
Creative Alliance Juried Biennial, curated by Thom Collins, Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD
Hello Charm City!, Gallery Imperato, Group Show, Baltimore, MD
ROY G BIV, Rosenberg Gallery, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD
Slice, Dice & Adhere, Boggs/Hampton/Rieck, Samson Projects, Boston, MA
2004
-scope Miami, represented by: lyonswiergallery, New York
Corcoran Faculty Biennial, Corcoran Museum, Washington, DC
Lyons Wier Gallery, Solo Show, New York
The Material World, Arts Club of Washington, Solo Show curated by Stacey Schmidt, Washington, DC
2004
Open Studio Exhibition, School 33, Baltimore, MD
Meat Market, lyonswiergallery, Group Show, New York
Mid-Atlantic New Painting 2004, curated by Stephen Bennett Phillips,
Mary Washington College, Fredricksburg, VA
-scope New York, represented by: lyonswiergallery, New York
Figurative Painting 101, lyonswiergallery, New York
2003
The Chateau, Group Show curated by David Hunt, New York, NY
MFA Juried Exhibition, Fox 4 Gallery, Baltimore, MD
FIN, Decker Gallery, Group Exhibition, Baltimore, MD
Covert, Whole Gallery, Group Exhibition, Baltimore, MD
2002
Freestylin, Meyerhoff Gallery, Group Exhibition, Baltimore, MD
Fox 3 Gallery, Group Exhibition, Baltimore, MD
2001
Fox 3 Gallery, Group Exhibition, Baltimore, MD
diPietro Todd, Solo Exhibition, San Francisco
2000
Studio 525, Group Exhibition, Los Angeles
2223 Market Street, Solo Exhibition, San Francisco
1999
Gap, Inc., Corporate Offices, Group Exhibition, San Francisco
Architects & Heroes Gallery, Solo Exhibition, San Francisco
Studio Gallery, Group Exhibition, San Francisco
Gap, Inc., Corporate Offices, Group Exhibition, San Francisco
1998
Architects & Heroes Gallery, Solo Exhibition, San Francisco
440 Brannan Gallery, Group Exhibition, San Francisco
Cowboys & Angels Gallery, Solo Exhibition, San Francisco
COLLECTIONS:
Burger Collection, Switzerland
Bollag-Rothschild Collection, Switzerland
Chadha Art Collection, The Netherlands
HONORS:
2004 Individual Artist Grant, Maryland State Arts Council
2004 First Place, Mid-Atlantic New Painting 2004
2003 The Municipal Arts Society Henry Walters Traveling Scholarship
2003 The Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture Fellowship
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
August 20, 2004 “Our Picks”, Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post, p. WE3
May 12, 2004 “Steppin Out”, New York Sun
April 15, 2004 “Past the Post”, GW Hatchet
March 31, 2004 Artworks This Week, Maryland Public Television
January 22, 2004 “Pushing the Boundaries of Painting”, The Free Lance-Star
December 21, 2003 “A Show of Endurance”, The Baltimore Sun, pp.7F - 8F
December 17, 2003 “The Year in Art, Top Ten”, Baltimore City Paper, p. 37
November, 2003 “Something's Going On”, a-n Magazine (UK art magazine), p. 30
