Spring 2004 Talks
Matthew Ritchie
3/30/2004
Matthew Ritchie (b.1964, London, England) creates paintings, sculptures, murals, light-walls, and web-based projects that explore the nature of perception and the many ways in which we try to describe and understand the universe. Ritchie draws upon sources as disparate as mathematics, comic books, biblical stories, video games, and information technology to create a promiscuous and evolving body of work whose central purpose is to explore how we model our own consciousness.
Rineke Dijkstra
4/13/2004
Over the past ten years, Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra (b.1959, Sittard, Netherlands) has acquired a reputation as one of the most well-respected photographers. Dijkstra began her photographic career freelancing for such publications as Elle, Avenue, and Elegance in Europe. Since then, she has developed a unique, candid style of portraiture influenced by formal classicism and layered with intense psychological depth. Dijkstra’s color photographs and videos employ natural light and minimal backgrounds, revealing a raw immediacy and an almost clinical attention to detail.
Paul McCarthy
Paul McCarthy (b.1945, Salt Lake City, UT) has become infamous over the past three decades for his no-holds-barred installations, videos, sculptures, body-art performances, and photographs. Much of the artist’s oeuvre incorporates household materials, a trademark use of the grotesque, and kitschy icons. McCarthy has often formulated an equation between architecture, the human body, and the human psyche.
Public Art Fund Talks are organized by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.