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Fri, Jan 25 - Fri, Feb 1
RUN #00042
Rick Vian - Life Without Art Is Stupid
Rick Vian
Life Without Art Is Stupid
Edition Size:   50
18 x 24 inch Silkscreen on 140lb Archival French Paper
This Run is Sold Out

This Sneak Peek into the archives is for (3) Signed/Numbered Artists Proofs. Each print will come with a signed Certificate of Authenticity.



Just as there is no "medium" without a "message" (and vice versa), there is no discourse about art worth hearing unless a simple imperative is provided at some point to justify art's presence in our society. Rick Vian, a painter and teacher at the College for Creative Studies, took a hint from the philosopher Occam and with razor-like precision carved out a maxim we can all agree upon: Life Without Art is Stupid.

There is nothing fatuous about those words, people. Any individual who truly thinks (or worse, has been taught to believe) that life is nothing more than mere respiration and expiration is actually wasting the measured-out breath of an all-too brief existence on this planet. Something inherent in the human condition desires the contemplation and appreciation of those things that are created by human hands. More importantly, there is something in every artistic expression that validates the human condition itself.

Discuss This Run

About the Artist

Location: Detroit, MI

I am mostly interested in visual perception and the underlying patterns that make sense of it. And i am interested in how the visual information of this world is filtered through the mechanisms of perception (which are part of that world) and is affected by thought and emotion, resulting in expression.

There is a certain “grid” underlying my work, which i use as a shape and form generating matrix. It consists of a limited number of angles and curves and results in compositions which i rework until they feel “right”. This “grid” idea was originally inspired by looking at trees. I noticed that each species of tree conformed to certain proclivities of growth, which i thought of as a kind of “grid” over which innumerable patterns could be laid. Regardless of the individual pattern, an oak could be recognized as an oak, because the pattern of its growth (its “growth habit”) stayed largely within the framework of structure allowed by its dna; its “grid”. The kinds of grids with which i am concerned, are networks that underly and organize perception, and are inherent in the structures of the world we perceive. Because these structures are most apparent in trees, i use trees as a referent. Also, the structures and resulting patterns are amenable to compositional manipulation, more so than, say, the human figure.

Find out more @ http://rickvian.com/