Devotional Drawing: Richard Wright at the Gagosian
- Giulia Carletti
- 30 set 2015
- Tempo di lettura: 2 min
A site-specific project of stained-glass windows – doubtlessly magnificent and sensational – is what the exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Rome (shown until November 10) revolves around. However, Richard Wright’s corpus of watercolors and typographical interventions - displayed onto a table at the center of the oval room – are perhaps what strike a less monumental-works-amateur’s eye. Works for which the press release did not spend too much words.
Like engravings, symmetrically repeated anagrams of lines, beautiful and mysterious landscapes, they recall sunburns, deluges, Nordic mountains, diagrams’ waves. Due to the organic-like pattern, our eye, wandering among these surrealistic landscapes, struggles to conceive them as a purely abstract form as it tries to rationalize the two-dimensional space into a tridimensional one.
If the magic of medieval architecture informed Wright’s glasswork, medieval illuminated manuscripts and ancient Oriental prints allowed him to discover a sort of devotional approach to drawing. In these small watercolors, intricate patterns and organic lines rule the composition, rendered lively by vibrant colors and additional motives. We literally see Wright’s dedication and careful engagement to the act of drawing, similar to that of the amanuenses, who dedicated their effort to God. “I don’t do religious works – Wright says – but I absorbed the attention to details, something that you find in devotional situations” (Wright in conversation with Will Bradley at the BSR).
In the series of typographical works, we see Wright physically intervening onto old editions of books, his books, which he both read and study. “With Gagosian I share the interest in typography,” Wright confesses to Bradley. Among them are Ezra Pound’s A draft of XXX Cantos, Fuck You a Magazine for the Art, Ernst’s Journal d’un Astronaute Millenaire, as well as other art history books. Wright appears to have a playful relationship with them. Like a child. A child with a witty eye, who knows that the act of drawing is an act of personal satisfaction.
Throughout his watercolor, it is not hard to imagine that Wright appears to be concerned in the process of drawing rather than in the final result. “I love factualism of Mondrian paintings,” he says. Wright dedicates himself completely to that work, which results as a “personal performative acts rather than a public one,” says Bradley. In his watercolors, we discover - little by little - the devotion and patience he puts in the act of drawing. Contemplation is a right not only of the beholder, but also of the artist who creates, while creates.
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