BEYOND THE STREETS is happy to announce Celebration at Megiddo, the LA solo debut from Oakland-based visible artist Gregory Rick. A recipient of SFMOMA’s 2022 SECA Artwork Award, fresh graduate of Stanford College’s MFA artwork observe program, and player in BEYOND THE STREETS’ inaugural Submit Graffiti exhibition, Rick will show off a brand new choice of paintings that builds at the style of historical past portray, describing his artwork as exploring “the identified, the difficult to understand, and the forgotten”, whilst wondering the who’s and why’s of historical past.
A local of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Rick’s paintings is encouraged by means of private reports, however isn’t totally private. It tells tales that replicate his lifestyles because it pertains to a discussion with the broader international. The place delusion provides voice to the underbelly, the lumpen in tandem exhibiting the acquainted and grandiose. His paintings tethers in combination apparently opposing concepts between the private, the ancient and the political.
“I’m portray on a shaky ancient line cemented in humility and conviction. I occupy my photos with characters who function archetypes together with reminiscence and self-exploration reflecting at the absurdness and monumentality of historical past,” Rick stocks.
The identify for Rick’s display combines two phrases that appear inextricably opposing but cemented in cognitive dissonance. Megiddo is a connection with the fight of Armageddon, being town through which the good ultimate fight used to be prophesied to happen. It references a birthday party on the ultimate fight of humanity, wondering the unsure occasions we are living in, the place we impulsively feed the hearth of the anthropocene, on cruise keep watch over within the rapid lane to extinction with such reckless ferocity it nearly turns out as though we’re celebrating our personal loss of life. The exhibition has few solutions however as an alternative displays and fosters many questions as Rick ponders a a very powerful a part of this modern second.
Rick’s fondness for artwork started across the time his father used to be sentenced to jail for manslaughter. It served as each a method of gaining company in a chaotic adolescence – as one has keep watch over of the narrative in a single’s personal photos – and as a connection together with his father during the meticulous copying of illustrations from an outdated army encyclopedia that he left at the back of sooner than being incarcerated. When faculties in his house stopped providing artwork categories, Rick changed into infatuated with the artwork that used to be readily to be had, which used to be graffiti. He would commit his lifestyles to decoding the cryptic language, which led to bother with the regulation, together with fees that had been in the end cleared after Rick enlisted within the Military. There he used to be assigned to the a hundred and first Airborne Department, with whom he fought in Iraq from 2005 to 2006.
After his enlistment time period used to be up, Rick discovered it arduous to regulate again to his outdated lifestyles and in the end discovered himself homeless and suffering with various problems. He nonetheless carried round pen and paper and would draw for a similar causes that motivated him in his adolescence. All over this seminal level in his lifestyles, he sought lend a hand from the native Veterans Affairs workplace, the place artwork changed into a vital side of his restoration.
“Gregory Rick’s paintings speaks about energy and anguish, just right and evil. About resiliency. He contextualizes those narratives by means of mining the complexities of our collective previous and sharing views regularly ignored in ancient accounts. His skill to polish a gentle at the oppressed and forgotten is a triumph that we’re proud and excited to percentage with Los Angeles,” says gallery director Dante Parel.
BEYOND THE STREETS Gallery
434 N L. a. Brea Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90036