Mark Rich creates art that is an immensity sprouting details that proclaim a fugitive legibility, as though our interior worlds were both wide-ranging and compartmentalized. He offers a jumble of intuitions, insights, panic and pain, always peering at signs to read as though prying apart the bars of our thought prisons.



His oscillation between apocalyptic and reconciled forms a thematic thread through this show on view at the Five Points Art Gallery in Torrington. Rich has commented: “To remain calm and compassionate in the face of fear is a noble goal for us all as a species.”

In the canvas titled “Airplanes and Dirt Naps” the plunging bodies and airplanes aimed like an arrow at the World Trade Center tower evoke the fiery pain of 9/11. An alert Dalmatian witnesses the swirling effects of the strike, even as shovels wait mutely at an adjacent burial ground. The pastel color scheme belies the dark spirit of that moment, as does a winged wrench head like a medieval soul seemingly flying to heaven. Are the gentle hues the color of hope? If so, they might be a cue to his tenacious quest for the absolute contained in the ordinary. Nearby, delicately stenciled pairs of high heeled shoes solemnly ascend. As the novelist Yannick Haenel observes “We imagine we are separated from all things by a hollow space ...and then one day the hollow space opens at our feet and the hole grows to the dimensions of the world: we are inside it.” Rich handles the human predicament with a sophisticated sensibility that acknowledges how we all teeter on the brink.



"Water Street Geese" by Mark Rich

The elaborately patterned “Water Street Geese” also features watchers/witnesses from the busy geese to an iconic blob-headed figure who looks like a Fisher-Price “play people” Water Street Geese escapee. The letter “y” held up by a hand in a suit jacket is a recurring motif, as if flying the question “why” to ever greater heights. Arches, ladders, parallel tracks, fences, and gates, proliferate on these canvases, acting as both threat and refuge. You might see these bars as layers of irreality which instigate a probe beneath the surface, an exploration which is more like gently pushing aside fronds than storming the citadel.

"Ascension #1" by Mark Rich

Layers work to remind us that we see what we want to see, lingering on the deceptive surface, even as our longings for resolution remain blocked. The artist loves small gauge patterns which seem a nod to the composition of the physical universe, ultimately composed of molecules and particles. Rich rides his spray can across stencils of the universe, a hitchhiker on shooting stars whose infinitely ancient lights briefly shine on his work. In “Ascension #1,” a row of play people have a plaintive air, as though waiting for the curtain to lift on their own lives. A cheery yellow blob appears to be sipping something delicious from an orange, but the imagery is topped with those stenciled empty shoes, once again flying to heaven.

Enigmas abound, even as abundant symbols beg for interpretation.



"Difficult Explanation" by Mark Rich

Rich says of the stream of floating symbols in “Difficult Explanation” that “the current is strong, a good place to drift.” Meanwhile, on the shore, poignant wrench people appear slightly bent, metal softened: these working stiffs have lost their temper in the heat of mundane wear and tear. Whimsical yet deeply serious, the artist opens doors to experience without judgment.

Speaking of his repeated depiction of a stylized graveyard, Rich says “the phrase Dirt Nap is comic to me, it refuses to be afraid and remains cavalier in the face of death.” He is willing to envision one foot in the grave but embeds it in a carefree atmosphere, where wine glasses stand ready to toast the bitter end.