Interview by Miki Garcia
Director of Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum
October, 2008
Miki Garcia: Rick, you have a background in
architecture and filmmaking. Do you think these interests
influence your current work and if so, how?
Richard Aber: Yes, absolutely! My interest in
architecture preceded that of filmmaking simply because my father was
an architect and I learned the craft from him. When I entered
college I went into the filmmaking department because I felt there was
the possibility of effectively bringing about social change through
documentaries. I gravitated toward documentary work simply
because I'm more of a literalist and the notion of "reality" is so hard
to pin down it presented more of a challenge for me. Both of
these early involvements ultimately drove me into the artist studio,
though, for simplicity in my life and the desire to maintain control of
my output. Having said that, my interest in film and architecture
have come together now in my work in a way that is very complimentary
for me. I can now work conceptually within a large historical
framework like that of the epic film, then distill that information
into work that will hopefully impart the depth of that experience.
MG: Your work a few years back used
bronze with an aesthetic import placed on different patinas. How
are these works an outgrowth of this practice?
RA: For almost all of the work I have
done in bronze I used only one patina. This was because no matter
what you put on the metal it will eventually turn to a color that is
determined by its environment. The works I believe you are
referring to, the Remnants and Piers, were an attempt to create a
variety of colors for the rich visual effects, and to imply an ancient
quality to the works. I was probably doing the same thing, to
some extent, with the earlier pieces in my current work. But for
the most part I'm interested in exploring how best to communicate my
feelings about the grid and its impact on our culture. MG: Why did you decide to move to a more
pliable support/medium?
RA: Well, after working in the foundry
for so many years I felt that, for health reasons, I needed to change
my working environment. Being a sailor, I recalled the large,
clean sail lofts that I used to visit in Newport Beach and how they
represented almost a celestial place for me. So I changed my
studio over to working in canvas. I first went back to working on
stretcher bars and then, wanting to disrupt the picture plane, I
started working with unstreched canvas. MG: You also have a full body of
paintings....can you tell me how these are in dialogue with your
sculptures and installations?
RA: As I mentioned, being a literalist
searching for some kind of truth and reality keeps bringing me back to
forms and paint rather than painting pictures. Color is therefore
very important to me; pure chroma like what you experience in a flower
is transformative. So I attempt to come as close as I can to the
way color is presented to us naturally, without gloss and with infinite
complexity.
MG: This work is heavily dependent on the
grid but you give this geometric form great freedom in the organic
handling. Much art making over the past 25 years has been driven by
reductionist and exclusionary motives (one need only think of Agnes
Martin) so how do you feel about this form and why are you drawn to it?
RA: Certainly there is a lot of grid
painting out there. It has become, in a way, a convention when
dealing with concrete art and its derivatives. The whole Western
philosophical project that was reductionist led us to that point in
painting. It has now been substantiated that grids do, in fact,
reside deep in the subconscious mind, for whatever reason.
Martin's work is a good example of how well she understood the nature
of this aspect of the mind. The fundamental way in which things
are stitched together permeates much of what we do and how we make
things work. Aside from what we understand about quantum
mechanics, the grid is the primary way we navigate the world, so it has
had some benefit. On the other hand, what I am interested
in is the impact and the cultural ramifications of the use of the grid
throughout history as an enabler to go out to some place and come
back. I take a critical position while also embracing it, and
question its impact on world culture.
MG: Much of your work is highly symbolic,
referencing broad conceptual paradigms to particular or specific
themes. Can you describe some of the themes or subjects that
reoccur in your work and why these are preoccupation's for you?
RA: When I was a baby my family used to
call me the little Buddha, because I would sit for long periods of time
just staring off into space. When Mom and Dad approached me they
said that I would look at them in the most quizzical way. I have
always been interested in the way things are, "suchness". I don't
ever recall, when looking deep inside myself for me, that I found a
"me" there. I did find in my continued sitting an up welling of
love and compassion and a desire to understand the conditions of
life. Themes of war, conquest, power, greed, the physical
universe and the question of a spiritual reality have, from the
beginning, run through my work. I don't seem to be married to one
particular medium but will use any means to bring what it is about
these matters to definition. When I look at the natural world I
see no "god" with a conscience, only an energy of unconditional
love. This can be a problem for almost everything. The
resulting development of natural hierarchies works for the support of
life but it does nothing to eliminate suffering. It is our
responsibility as conscious beings, who have a choice in our actions,
to act in ways that eliminate suffering as much as we can. This
is at the crux of our responsibility, and it is in us to do something
about it.
MG: The title of this exhibition, Shrine,
obviously references a spiritual dimension - an architectonic one that
is also indicative of a building/form which enshrines something
presumably sacred. Can you elaborate on the title's relationship
to the physical experience of walking in and through the installation
at CAF?
RA: When I develop a work it mostly comes
from an intuitive place. It's after the form has developed that I
come to some understanding of what it is about. I had a general
notion about what I was dealing with here, but I try not to predefine
what I do. Historically, shrines were typically used to contain
spiritual content. But as the world has become increasingly
secular there is this possibility to look at the shrine in different
terms. In this way, Fort Knox is a shrine. I suppose you
could look at this work as cutting in both directions, because the
symbolic content can be understood in opposing ways. Gold can be
thought of in terms of both good (purity) and bad (greed), blackness as
good or bad emptiness. For the purposes of this project I would
prefer to leave it up to the viewer to decide. However, I would
like to mention that there seems to be overwhelming evidence that greed
has far outstripped good as the moving force behind the human quest for
gold, and an even deeper relationship exists between gold and spiritual
materialism. I intended to make a place where you could feel
these things. I hope viewers will experience the compression and
ambivalence of their feelings when walking into the space and around
the work and into the dark interior.
MG: In terms of the color palette of
recent work--dark rusty reds, smoky grays and black, and luminous
gold you are influenced by anthropological and historical points of
departure. In fact, you have created a mind map so to speak of
references that include Egyptian, Coptic, and Celtic totems and
artifacts, old cartographic prints, asian and eastern
architecture. How was this collage important to you and what is
it that weaves these disparate influences together for you?
RA: When you start to develop ideas about
a work, many factors come into play. I grew up having access to a
wonderful collection of books that my father had on art, architecture,
and archaeology. It was this influence that led me to look deeply
into those areas and evolved into the way my work has developed.
I have always assumed that anybody confronted with an unfamiliar object
would be able to piece together some sort of free associations that
went back through their history of dealing with objects and
culture. I think some objects may be more difficult to approach
and may sometimes sit in limbo in the mind of the viewer. As I
stated earlier, I have always tried to make work that was open, hoping
to build into the work many levels of interpretation. On the
other hand, it would be nice to have some viewers "get" where I'm
coming from. So with this in mind I started going through all of
the books that I had access to as a child with the intention of
recognizing the images that I remembered having made an impression on
me. The interesting thing about this was that I had forgotten so
many specific images. They had slipped into my subconscious, and
were operating as the imaginative sources of my work. I realized,
in some sense, that these images could become a visual code, and a
reference to my work. I copied the images and made a large
collage that was organized into their various aspects and strains of
influence. Within the collage there is evidence of a correlation
between religion, exploration, and conquest. From the very
beginning of our historical record we have been dealing with the same
issues that have come to define the way we live and deal with each
other. The fundamental tenets of our culture are based on a
spiritual materialism that appears to be unshakable. In making
this work I am asking questions about the nature of the shrine
itself. The notion of holding onto something that can't be held
onto, which leads to the belief that we can hold on to it, which then
becomes the basis and root of power. I suppose I am also asking
the question, is it possible to let go of something once you know the
true nature of its implications?
MG: Finally, how is the process of
working site-specifically affecting your practice?
RA: As I mentioned, my basic training
took place in architecture and documentary film, both of which are very
site-specific practices. I have worked in this way in tandem with
my studio practice pretty much from the beginning, doing models,
proposals, and completed works for public and private spaces.
There is still in the work a recognizable aspect relating to my studio
output, but it conforms to and is integrated into a site with intention.