Clark Richert in hyperspace

Clark Richert in hyperspace celebrates the work of one of Colorado’s most important artists. MCA Denver’s major retrospective exhibition presents the breadth of Richert’s oeuvre while highlighting the specific aesthetic and philosophical questions that have informed it for more than fifty years.

The exhibition begins with Richert’s participation in Drop City, the artist community that he co-founded near Trinidad, Colorado, from 1965 to 1969, and draws connections between this foundational period and his paintings of subsequent decades.

The exhibition reconciles Richert’s paintings with his work at Drop City by tracing the conceptual through-line that runs the length of his career. It explains how his ongoing interest in dimensionality—the characteristics of and relationship between one, two, three, and higher dimensions—has shaped his approach to art-making from the outset.

Richert’s curiosity about dimensionality was informed, in large part, by R. Buckminster Fuller’s ideas, including Fuller’s design for the geodesic dome, which Richert and his fellow “Droppers” followed in building their living and working spaces at Drop City. His preoccupation with dimensionality defines the patternistic paintings he made as a member of the Boulder-based collective Criss-Cross, in the 1970s and early 1980s, determined his subsequent turn toward pictorialism, in the late 1980s and 1990s, and drove his return to geometric abstraction in the early 2000s. The exhibition demonstrates how his concern with the tension between two and three dimensions, specifically in painting, and geometries that suggest the existence of dimensions beyond those with which we are familiar, underpins his entire creative output.

A complementary exhibition at MCA Denver, nth Dimension, demonstrates Richert’s impact on a younger generation of artists. Richert taught painting at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design from 1998 to 2018 and continues to serve as a professional mentor and artistic role model to many of his former students. The artists included in this exhibition who claim Richert as an influence include Joseph Coniff, Gregory Hayes, Jason Hoelscher, Matthew Larson, Karen McClanahan, Kate Nickel, Bruce Price, and Zach Reini. Evidence of Richert’s style, methods, and, above all, concern with dimensionality can be identified in the works on view here.

Clark Richert was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1941. He earned a BFA from the University of Kansas, in 1963, and an MFA from the University of Colorado, in 1972. Richert’s work has been shown at venues across the U.S., including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Brooklyn Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, and Walker Art Center. He lives and works in Denver.

Clark Richert in hyperspace and nth Dimension open at MCA Denver on June 7, 2019 and run through September 1, 2019. Both exhibitions are curated by Zoe Larkins, Assistant Curator. Clark Richert in hyperspace is accompanied by a catalogue, edited by Zoe Larkins, with contributions from Eva Díaz and Cortney Lane Stell. The forthcoming catalogue is made possible by support from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation.

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art will concurrently be holding a complementary exhibition of Richert’s work from June 6, 2019 to September 15, 2019. More information can be found on their website at www.BMOCA.org.