brooklyn NEW YORK

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
Daniel RICH: This set is about translating photographs into paintings that call attention to implicit political and social narratives transcribed in the built environment…

…The architectural image is represented in my work to introduce a dialogue about changing political power structures, failed utopias, the impacts of ideological struggles, war and natural upheavals. I am interested in the highly symbolic role architecture plays in politics and its power to function as an icon of our lived experience, a portrait of an existential phenomenology whose features manifest where society is at one particular moment in history.
My paintings point to the shifting of the significance and meaning in both images of places and the places themselves. My interest in the potential divergence and duality of images and the media’s role in covering and presenting issues to the public is closely tied to a pictorial architecture, and its ability to act as an icon for political, religious and social systems and beliefs. I collect and appropriate photographs I find on the Internet and in newspapers, in response to radio and television broadcasts, and through research and reading. The mediated image is painted in order to invest the picture with the capability to function as a signifier and to evoke meaning and discourse.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
DR: Thinking back, the events of 9/11, 2001 had a profound impact on the development of my work. I was struck not only by the role architecture played as the symbolic targets of the attacks, but how it served as a constant backdrop for unfolding events. 2001 was pretty much my “political awakening” and

I began to think about how I could appropriate imagery to serve as a vehicle to talk about changing political power structures, (failed) utopias and the impacts of ideological struggles in my work. This premise continues to be my project.

I moved to the US from Germany in 1996 and decided to go to art school where I discovered my love for painting and printmaking. Growing up I was all consumed with skateboarding, punk music and also with graffiti and Hip Hop. I think being out in the city skating, painting and exploring brought about a certain perspective on life and also an awareness of the built environment that has definitely informed my work. I have also always been very interested in history and I consider myself to be a news junkie- even though that seems to be tougher than ever these days!

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?:
DR: Favorite recent reads include “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen, “The Handmaids Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “The Orphan Masters Son” by Adam Johnson, and Marsha Gessen’s “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin”.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
DR: Thanks to living in New York City, the internet and social media, I feel overloaded with artists’ I greatly admire so it’s difficult for me to pinpoint just a few. I have always loved Rene Magritte’s work… Gerhard Richter and Andreas Gursky have been very influential. Ridley Howard and Thomas Demand come to mind… I also love what Moses and Taps are doing on the “graffiti front”…

Words by Daniel RICH (www.danielrich.net)