Folded Self-Portrait with Night I 2007

Curator: I find Charles Ritchie's "Folded Self-Portrait with Night I" from 2007 particularly compelling. The medium is charcoal on paper. What's your initial reaction? Editor: My immediate impression is a feeling of melancholic serenity. It's dark, but not oppressive, and the layers of imagery create a dreamlike quality. It feels very personal. Curator: Absolutely. Ritchie has a fascination with interior spaces, combined with his experience and memory, and he masterfully layers different spaces and times, to create drawings where one can clearly observe its medium and production process. He's playing with the material limits of charcoal, using it to conjure luminosity out of darkness. But I am very curious as to where his work fits in the historical canon, in the scope of the production of drawing and printmaking, since his visual language makes the image look so delicate. Editor: That's interesting. I see a confluence of social influences shaping this quiet piece. On one level, it’s a reflection of Ritchie’s life and of the introspective direction art has been taking since modernism. The market's current turn towards the handmade certainly creates a fertile ground for the reception of pieces like these, with the rise of independent galleries in this contemporary environment which foster a kind of personalized interaction with art and the artists themselves, emphasizing the artist’s experience and subjectivity. Curator: I also notice a connection with nineteenth-century etching revival movement for instance. And, indeed, that's a good point about the performative aspect in his works that resonates within certain contexts. We know from the title that this work functions as self portrait of the artist and, considering this aspect, the landscape plays a great part of Charles Ritchie’s personal life. I find interesting the intersection of an autobiographical imagery where the private space blends itself in a kind of open studio for the artist and is transformed in an art object. Editor: It really blurs those lines between the personal and the public, doesn't it? Looking at this piece again, I am aware of my own interior spaces; I understand the role played by these sceneries, these places in my own history, in constructing an image of who I am. The material texture and tonal complexity truly do contribute to that intimate encounter with oneself and with art. Curator: Absolutely, and to witness that kind of reaction to a medium like charcoal shows how its very tangible presence really impacts our own understanding of art. Editor: It definitely lingers with me as an exploration of intimate realms where art finds and creates a profound social echo in individual viewers, not just today, but for the times to come.