ARTIST TALK with Richard Vine

Wednesday, May 8, 2024, 7:00 - 8:00 pm 

David Richard Gallery invites you to our Artist Talk on Wednesday, May 8. This discussion is part of the exhibition, Robert C. Morgan: Lonestar is Given to Love, on view through May 23, 2024. This presentation is Morgan's first solo exhibition with the gallery and includes 19 paintings of an intimate scale. The smallest measures 8.5 to 8.5 inches squares up to 22 x 22 inches and 16 x 30 inches. All works are acrylic paint on canvas, and nearly all have metallic paint incorporated to varying degrees. Morgan created all the paintings from 2010 through 2024, which includes the debut of the five newest and largest canvases from his latest Landscape series.

Morgan has had a dual career in art since the beginning, both as a maker and historical / writer. He makes no distinction between the two and views both as one and the same communication between his eye and mind on one level and the outside world on another level. In other words, personal and global considerations. His work is a manifestation of his thoughts and actions in and out of the studio, as well as his persona. He does not create nor adhere to boundaries, which allows him to respond to impulses and whatever interests him. Such an approach allows for experimentation and forays into seemingly disparate areas, thus keeping his work fresh and challenging over the past five decades. His adherence to detail permeates what he does, including his work's source.

Morgan was influenced early on by meeting Robert Motherwell and his words and advice. A series of stunning small gestural works resulted in the late 1960s and were presented at his solo exhibition in fall, 2022 at the Scully Tomasko Foundation in New York. While he has worked largely in geometric realms, the influence of Motherwell has persisted, mostly in terms of being true to his art-making and understanding of art history and theory, focused on his studio practice, exacting detail, and confidence, including his abilities and decisions, both in painting and writing.

Morgan does not create pictures. Instead, his artworks are the output of complex thoughts and introspection in the context and intersection of metaphysical thinking, awareness of history, and the reality of the contemporary outside world. Morgan works in series that first explore and then resolve a conflict. In some ways, the seriality implies a systemic approach; however, after seeing more of his artworks and approach, they truly seem more process-driven.

Morgan’s artwork has an unapologetic bluntness, writing probing binaries and contrasts, possibly because the truth or most interesting and compelling aspect of any interaction is at the very interface of the greatest differences between two opposites. Morgan’s approach is probing, challenging, demanding, and exacting. His paintings are full of binaries as noted above: warm vs cool colors, matte vs shiny surfaces, Eastern vs Western philosophies, rigorously geometric vs less defined conceptualism, curvilinear vs rectilinear shapes, and intellectual vs emotional approaches to art making, to name a few.

This expansive approach to art making and thinking provides multiple points of entry and interpretation. More importantly, it keeps the process and interpretations fresh and evergreen, which is remarkable when considering geometry as a subject and painting as a process. It is very much alive and kicking in Morgan’s world.

Morgan is a thinker and communicator. He utilizes every available method and channel to share his insights and learnings through different media and in diverse forms. His communications and teachings come through mark-making and painting, performative acts, curating exhibitions, lecturing large and small audiences, and the written word through verse: poetry or prose and narratives that share a story and attempt to make order out of desperate content and chaos.

Robert C. Morgan 

Robert C. Morgan’s paintings, photographs, performance works, conceptual art, and experimental films have been exhibited in several one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, South America, and the Republic of Korea. He has shown at prestigious galleries and museums, including exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1972, 1974), Franklin Furnace (1976), The Whitney Museum of American Art (1976), McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina (1980), Artists Space (1976, 1977, 1985), Galleri Bellman, NYC (1983), The Art Gallery of the University of Texas, Permian Basin (1984), The Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester (1986), CEPA, Buffalo (1987), Galerie Antoine Candau (Paris), 1989, Galerie 1900-2000, Cologne Art Fair (1990), Millennium Film Workshop (1988), Eric Stark Gallery (1992), Construction in Process in Lodz, Poland (1993), Anthology Film Archives (1996), and The Museum of Modern Art, Film Department (1999). From 1988-89, he was selected as an artist in residence at the International Studio Program at The Clocktower, Institute for Art and Urban Resources. In 2006, he was invited to screen a selection of his Super-8 films at the Millennium Film Workshop in New York. His paintings and early films were exhibited at the Gaya Fusion Gallery in Ubud, Bali, in the Republic of Indonesia (2006), the Amelie Wallace Gallery at SUNY Old Westbury (2007), and the Wooster Arts Space (2007). In 2009, Morgan was given a two-gallery survey exhibition (with catalog) at the Sideshow Gallery, Williamsburg, in collaboration with the Bjorn Ressle Gallery, NYC. In 2010, he performed “Purgation of Nike” at The Lab Gallery in New York. In 2012, Morgan showed recent paintings at Able Fine Art in Seoul, and was represented at the Korean International Art Fair in October 2012. A major survey exhibition (with catalog) was exhibited at the Proyectos Montclova in Mexico City (March 23 – April 29, 2017). His work was shown in 2017 and 2018 at the Armory Show in New York City. His solo show was at the Scully Tomasko Foundation (9.17-11.30, 2022) in New York, and a group show was at Gallery Artego in New York in 2022. He recently had a major exhibition at the Shilla Gallery in Seoul in 2023.

Richard Vine 

Richard Vine is a former managing editor of Art in America and the author of several hundred critical articles and reviews. His books include the career survey Odd Nerdrum: Painting, Drawing, and Sketches (2001) and the art-historical New China, New Art (2008), which traces the emergence of avant-garde art in post-Mao China. In 2016, he published the artworld crime novel SoHo Sins. Vine has taught at the New School, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New York University, and the University of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. In addition, he has lectured at museums and cultural institutions throughout the world, and curated exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China, the National Academy of Art in New Delhi, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, and Bienvenu Steinberg and J Gallery, New York.