Rico Gatson
Robustly chromatic, visually potent, at times compositionally labyrinthine and physically imposing, Rico Gatson’s mixed-media paintings, sculptures and collage-centric drawings are always, thanks in part to their carefully honed economy of forms and means, declarative, assertive and indelible—and unmistakably, unwaveringly his. On levels aesthetic and conceptual alike, Gatson does not imbue, but rather inundates his works with definitive, invariable force, executing them with just enough colorful vibrancy, linear keenness and mystical curiosity as to allow his viewers to almost—yet only almost, and this is crucial—miss or overlook their certainly important, equally cogent, subtly layered, variably strident socio-political content.
Rico Gatson lives and works in New York, NY. Gatson has been included in the exhibitions Prospect 1, New Orleans; Greater New York at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center; and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Most recently he was the subject of a two-person show at the Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, and Three Trips Around the Block, a solo retrospective at Exit Art, NY. The artist is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award for Visual Artists and the Oli Bar Ltd. Award for Excellence in Sculpture, Yale School of Art. Gatson's work …
Robustly chromatic, visually potent, at times compositionally labyrinthine and physically imposing, Rico Gatson’s mixed-media paintings, sculptures and collage-centric drawings are always, thanks in part to their carefully honed economy of forms and means, declarative, assertive and indelible—and unmistakably, unwaveringly his. On levels aesthetic and conceptual alike, Gatson does not imbue, but rather inundates his works with definitive, invariable force, executing them with just enough colorful vibrancy, linear keenness and mystical curiosity as to allow his viewers to almost—yet only almost, and this is crucial—miss or overlook their certainly important, equally cogent, subtly layered, variably strident socio-political content.
Rico Gatson lives and works in New York, NY. Gatson has been included in the exhibitions Prospect 1, New Orleans; Greater New York at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center; and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Most recently he was the subject of a two-person show at the Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, and Three Trips Around the Block, a solo retrospective at Exit Art, NY. The artist is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award for Visual Artists and the Oli Bar Ltd. Award for Excellence in Sculpture, Yale School of Art. Gatson's work has been acquired by the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; the Norton Family Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, among other public and private collections. Rico Gatson is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.
Courtesy of Dieu Donné
Bethel College, St. Paul, MN, 1989
