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MARK JACKSON INTERVIEWS RICHARD ALDRICH - Summer 2024

~~ Originally published in Turps Magazine Issue 29 ~~

MJ: The idea of the rhizome—which you refer to with a ‘mix of jokey pretentiousness and total seriousness’ in the text for your exhibition Strange Strings: The Rhizome As It Is Employed In The Mapping Of The Psyche—seems to encompass an attitude you have in making connections in your work. The rhizome, being a model for thinking about the world, semiotic chains or the organisation of meaning, is different to more traditional, hierarchical structures. The rhizome has no centre, or no central command for instance. Could you elaborate on this a little in relation to your practice as a whole? 

RA: It wasn’t so much the rhizome that was jokey, more the clichéd way of presenting titles in that manner. But yes, and especially early on, the rhizome is something that is very important to me. It came from when I moved to NYC and joined a reading group in which we read Anti-Oedpus. That ended up being the only book we finished, but then I read more Deleuze and Guattari on my own. It was a real watershed of ideas that remains one of my biggest influences. One of the more interesting concepts was this notion of writing in a way that behaves like what one is writing about, as opposed to just explaining something using words. It was a real embodiment of ideas, as opposed to an explanation of ideas. So this notion of decentralisation for instance, becomes using words and then using the same words later but attributing a different meaning to them. It felt more like a conceptual art project rather than a text, and created a difficult but enriching way of coming to understand and learn about something. I will say I think I initially was drawn to the rhizome in part because it was something I remembered from grade school—learning about root systems—tubers and rhizomes etc. So I had this funny pre-knowledge of it, or rather a pre-knowledge of the metaphor. But using painting as a way to think of and present this experience of invisible through-lines and how that changes how things can be perceived or understood was much more interesting to me than the development of a painting style.  

MJ: This kind of decentralisation is there for instance in your paintings Time and a Word. There are two of them that both share the same title. One canvas has a pair of trousers attached to it, the other is a painted face or mask. These disparate subjects are somehow linked, but it’s hard to fathom. And they also share their titles with the second album by Yes! Which complicates things further. These surprising connections can make our imaginations resonate, but there is always the possibility of a muted affect—like we just can’t form meaning out of them, or something. Is this how you see it? Is that possibility of connection and disconnection of interest to you?

RA: Glad you got the Yes reference. I thought to mention that but didn’t want the press release to get too wordy.  But also, and more importantly, I think the idea of someone not knowing a reference can be equally as interesting as knowing. Early on a lot of my paintings had personal backstories or material connections or semi-obvious antecedents. This is still the case I suppose, and a lot of that was a response to the early Internet where knowledge was suddenly so readily available and I wanted to comment on that in some way.  There is the conceptual idea of the potential of knowing information that is interesting to me. There is the actual event of when that connection is made, when that potential becomes realised, and how that process of discovery unfolds. Each can be a different experience and each have their own discursive universe. Each compound the other at a certain point as they begin to inform the viewer’s experience of the work as a whole. There is a certain fleetingness of information that I am interested in as well. A Yes fan will maybe know that song, someone else will think maybe I just came up with a poetic turn of phrase as a title, each will bring that with them to their understanding of the painting. 

For me, I have always been a deep dive person in terms of music and art, so while I wouldn’t have a large breadth of knowledge of say free jazz, I know so much about Sonny and Linda Sharrock. Same thing with art. I know so much about Vuillard but less about Post-Impressionism in general. So a lot of my interest in making art was creating a web of connections and information, much like a long and involved literary text.   In terms of the public this is, and always has been, a problematic aspect of my work. To an extent it requires a more in-depth knowledge of the larger whole, which is difficult, but what can you do? And I should qualify that I think all levels of engagement are worthwhile and have value. A comprehensive investigation or approaching something solely as a decorative object—it is all part of an artwork’s existence. Of course you hope for a more involved interaction, but an art experience can and should be all these things.

MJ: Can I ask about music and painting? Are these separate things for you? Do they talk to each other? Are they almost the same? 

RA: I don’t play music much these days. The majority of people I played with have since moved out of town. But yes, they are very similar. I would say too that I was an amateur writer as well, and art for me was a synthesis of both music and writing. I have spoken on this before but music is very in the moment, whereas writing is more planned out. Obviously music has a planned aspect, in terms of recording and releasing albums, and writing has an immediacy in terms of the actual process of writing, turns of phrase and all that, but these two different methods of creating both inform how I approach art making.   

I do often think that music reinforced a certain number of values in art for me—namely the wordlessness of it. In art there is often a need to explain. Maybe this comes from the role of school early in an artist’s life, while there is no school for music, and if anything, at least early on, it comes from a sort of anti-school attitude in the teenage sense. But it is interesting to think about things like experimentation or improvisation or writing songs and how these relate to painting—what those analogs would be. Or even just getting a feel for one's sensibilities and how they manifest themselves in both these fields—how you would describe the characteristics of a sparse song as compared to a sparse painting.    

MJ: The brown you use in many of your paintings seems particular. It’s a grey-brown. It looks like it’s mixed specifically rather than straight out of the tube, like brown seen through mist. Can you tell us about that colour, where it comes from, what it means to you?

RA: I only use three colours, red, yellow and blue (and also white and black, depending on if you count those as colours or not) and since brown is, of course, a mix of the three, it is different every time. I’m also still very thrifty with paint, so after working to the extent that my palette is full, before I clean it off I’ll mix all the remains together. The randomness of that process is always going to create something different. My best colours are often the ones I don’t intend to mix. Even a blue will have some amount of red or yellow in it. So the best blues are ones that have a mix of red and yellow that I wouldn’t have normally included. It seems like I should be able to do this more actively and purposefully, but nevertheless the most interesting colours often come about through little direction of my own.

MJ: You also use wax in your paintings. Could you tell us about that? When did you first come across it? What do you like about it? Do you heat it up?

RA: It’s cold wax, so pre-made and just mixed in with the paint. I make it a couple times a year. We were taught how to make it in a beginning painting class. It’s pretty easy. It makes things matte, but also thicker. For me I always think of the Duchamp quote, “painting died when artists stopped making their own paints”. But with the wax and other mediums I can affect the paint and its thickness, or wetness, or its smoothness, the way it reflects light, how it will lay on the canvas when dry, all of those amazing tactile qualities of painting.

MJ: You make a number of different types of paintings. Are you interested in the Abstract-Expressionist (sometimes considered to be more emotional) and the Minimalist (sometimes considered to be more intellectual) positions at the same time? And does this relate in some way to your seemingly ambivalent stance towards painting—both enjoying the act itself but also having a certain standoffishness towards it?

RA: I would say I don’t subscribe to either. To go back to Duchamp, I think he was just a hardcore sculptor who was interested in things outside of sculpture discourse at the time. He is remembered as found-object-guy and all that, but mostly they were very made, very felt with in terms of their physicality: the airy sugar cubes that are actually heavy marble; the coat rack that is screwed to the ground. The questions he was asking weren’t asked before, they were more intangible, more about what an object is and how it gets there. That is the conceptuality I am interested in. 

With painting, it is tough because there are so many types and ways of painting that people are interested in. You can have certain overlaps with people, but there is a lot that I don’t have an affinity for. These similarities and differences, especially with friends, are always interesting to locate. Painting is just a site for asking and answering questions. Often more interesting is determining what the question actually is, and the answers aren’t needed to be good answers.

MJ: Can I ask about your studio process, how long paintings take to finish in particular?

RA: Sometimes paintings will be finished quickly, and other times they sit in this state of not-yet-there for a long time! It can be quite annoying, and it’s always good to feel like a painting is finished, but often they’re like this because they need to find something that I haven’t done before. That can take time, but the end result is usually something much more interesting.

MJ: So you sometimes need something from just beyond your existing purview and for that you have to wait?

RA: I think it is just waiting for it to settle in a way, in my mind. I remember reading Letters to a Young Poet in college, there’s a part where Rilke describes sadness as being something that one hasn’t encountered before. I don’t think that is entirely correct, but there’s a similarity where maybe something about the painting is making me question it, but it's just that it's not something I've done before, so that newness creates an uncertainty. It just needs time to understand it, and then I can be like “oh, that is actually quite good!” Of course, it could also just be that the painting isn’t good and that’s what’s prompting the uncertainty. Throw in the relative understanding of what constitutes “good” and it is all very hard to pin down! I mean, again, art is just questions and answers.

MJ: So some paintings are finished when they’re finished and that can take a long time. With this difficult to predict factor, how do you work to the pressures of deadlines with showing your work? Do you have many things on the go at once?

RA: I usually work on a few at a time, but I also work very far in advance and often hold onto things for a while. It’s an ongoing process of working and looking and working and looking. Doing a show is often just curating. This is always how I have worked, so it feels natural. Though I would say one needs to find the balance between not being too prepared. There is something to say for the energy one gets from working right up to the finish line, so I often like to leave some things until the last minute. But for the most part I start working on a show far in advance.

MJ: Given that your reach is quite wide, is there anywhere you feel that you can’t go with your work?

RA: I don’t think in terms of where I can and can’t go, I’d say it’s important to stress that I am not trying to make a ‘kaleidoscope of work’, I’m just allowing myself to be. 

MJ: By kaleidoscope you mean making a range of styles for the sake of it? You mean you wouldn’t want to do that because that'd be too deliberate or strategic or something?

RA: Yeah, it would be too deliberate. It’s not about conceptualising a body of work that encompasses many styles. In the past I had written about honesty and truth, and the difference between the two. I think with honesty it’s just allowing, or even accepting, where your artistic impulses or intuition takes you. So as an artist things will come up and I try not to affect them or question them too much—one doesn’t want to mediate their unconscious. Of course one must still question their impulses as well. I always think of this notion of a groove and a rut. They describe the same thing, it’s just that one implies a contentedness and the other a discontent. So following your impulse could be repeating the same solutions or thinking patterns to the same problem over and over—this Proustian notion of habit. An artist needs to know how to determine when they’re in a rut or a groove, and how that difference affects what they’re doing. It’s also important to realise that sometimes a rut is actually a groove, and sometimes a groove is actually a rut. It can all get hilariously convoluted and there needs to be a certain lightness to it, but it goes back to decision making and being able to acknowledge and perceive the questions in an interesting way.

MJ: So the point isn't to be stylistically diverse to make a point, or for that plurality to become central to the work. Is it instead about having the freedom to work across multiple styles, and that variety emerges from the practice as opposed to a top-down strategy? 

RA: Well, I do think the plurality is a central pillar to my work, but really, in terms of working in my studio, it doesn’t cross my mind. I mean, more and more, especially in our current climate, I do think the stylistic diversity of it all is an important statement, but the impulse to do different things for me it isn’t a strategy. If anything, of late, my paintings are getting pushed into just two categories—very dense paintings and collage paintings. But to go back to this question of multiple styles, I have always said I don’t have a style I have a sensibility, and that sensibility is applied to everything even if the end result doesn’t look the same.

MJ: Let’s say then that there are many modes, rather than styles, in which your art materialises—drawing, collage, text paintings, paintings that I want to call Post-Impressionistic (but I’m tentative about giving them that name), paintings that are more graphic, sculptures, rooms, sounds, exhibition texts. How do you feel about the Gagosian show last year, To Bend the Ear of the Outer World for instance, where just one aspect of your work was extracted and presented under a very dominant heading—namely abstract painting? 

RA: Yeah, this has always been an issue. Initially I thought about it in this very open way in which anyone can be interested in whatever they want. I really liked the intro to the Neil Young biography where it starts out talking about different fans, and this one likes the noise jams, and this one likes the folk stuff, and this one likes it all.  So I appreciated the idea that people could be into different things and not necessarily everything. Conceptually, to go back to the rhizome, there is an instance where you just see one plant sticking out of the ground, taken out of the context of its larger system. So for that reason I have always thought it is fine, and even important, to take things out of their context. In practice this gets complicated for all the obvious reasons. I mean, a lot of the problems are things that I am also interested in. I want it to be up to the viewer to determine their level of engagement. Of course in a world of Instagram and art fairs and the speed of art, it makes it difficult to get beyond a surface read. But thus far I think what I do is the best solution. It wouldn’t make sense to call each exhibition a work, because I do think things can be mixed and matched. I have thought it could be interesting to go hardcore and only do solo shows. The PR power of that alone could be interesting. But like I say, it’s important that things exist in the world outside of themselves.

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