Steve Riedell
The artist's most recent works on canvas, Folded-Over Paintings, will be presented together with a selection of his works on panel and on paper. In Folded-Over Paintings, the most important aspect for the artist is the formal process of realization in which design and fortuitousness meet and merge together. In the passage from one phase of the creation process to another and during the brief journey from the work table to the wooden supports, the canvases assume unexpected forms which the then artist decides whether to indulge in or change.
Riedell makes the canvases assume various, bizarre forms: they are folded over several times creating irregularities in the overlapping folds, with the obverse and verso sides of the canvas occasionally reversed, rich, brilliant colours are mixed and affixed to the support leaving the metal staples which tear the canvas in plain sight until the artist finds the exact combination between the layers of paint and the surface. After the works have been completed and gathered together, the artist finds traces and recollections of familiar objects. These are objects forgotten on the beaches during his childhood in California, tied to sun and water. They are «rubber boats and inflated or deflated air mattresses, beach balls, chairs and sun beds - always on the verge of collapse - or sun-dried bathing suits (...). The colours of the individual pieces initially seem to keep me at a distance, but as I gradually approach, they become more subdued and seem suggest a former use » Riedell.