Dimensions: image: 840 x 1040 mm
Copyright: © Richard Wright | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: This is Richard Wright’s "Untitled Figure 6," currently held in the Tate Collections. The dimensions are roughly 840 by 1040 millimeters. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: Well, the grid feels regimented, almost sterile. But then you have these floating geometric shapes, a playful disruption, aren’t they? Curator: I see them as fragments of a forgotten language. The letters and forms suggest meaning, but it’s just beyond our grasp. Consider the visual weight these symbols have accumulated over time. Editor: And what about the materials? It’s on paper, yes, but how was it made? Is it a print, or is it hand-drawn? The means of production here become paramount to understanding its essence. Curator: Perhaps the mystery is the point. The lack of clarity forces us to confront our own assumptions about legibility and significance. Editor: Indeed. Ultimately, the piece highlights how materiality and context intersect in the construction of meaning. Curator: A compelling enigma. Editor: Agreed. Wright has given us much to consider.
Comments
Join the conversation
Join millions of artists and users on Artera today and experience the ultimate creative platform.
Gagosian Gallery Poster Edition is a portfolio of six screenprints. It was published by Gagosian Gallery, London and printed by Karl-Heinz Neumann, Cologne in an edition of thirty on thin white wove paper, mid-blue in colour, on the reverse. Tate’s copy is the third in the edition. Each print was made using between two and seven colours. Named Untitled Figure and numbered from one to six, these prints were initially conceived as a series of posters to be pasted onto internal or external walls, thus highlighting the ephemeral nature of Richard Wright’s work. The portfolio utilises many of the graphic motifs that have come to typify Wright’s personal imagery. His work originates from a variety of sources including twentieth-century art movements – such as Geometric Abstraction, Op art and Minimalism – and patterns derived from Medieval manuscripts, Gothic and Baroque architectural decoration, and tattoo and biker-jacket motifs. The combination of such diverse references results in an abstract graphic vocabulary of images with endlessly variable effects and multiple compositional possibilities.
CollectMore like this
