Barely Fair: Richard Galling & Umico Niwa
April 8 – 24, 2022
Opening this Friday 6–10pm
4146 N. Elston Ave. Chicago, IL
https://www.barelyfair.com/
Richard: I was starting to think about the small-scale nature of your work. They feel delicate, subtle and dynamic. Each work suggests the presence of a character or personality. The objects feel like they're gesturing as they inhabit space.
Umico: I want each of them to hold their ground, not through commanding coercion or an imposing presence. I don’t want to ever force the viewer to acknowledge my work through sheer scale and density. They exist in your peripherals so can only be found via a sense of curiosity.
I used to play this game with one of my friends where we would walk around our college campus to try to guess whether something was an impromptu art installation for a morning critique, or trash. There would be a tie dyed plastic bag wrapped around a lamp post covered with ant bespeckled barbecue sauce.
Richard: I’ve been thinking about ambience - objects and images functioning as background or as a way of framing the experience. I sense that in your work and my own in some ways - a theme we’re exploring in two different ways
Umico: When you see works that prime you to start noticing patterns elsewhere in the world with the hope that when people leave the gallery, they are primed with a sense of curiosity, and to continue to look in their peripheral view.
I feel that same way with these starfish, maybe it's like a week from now, a month from now or ten years from now, whether it's at a grocery store or at the dentist's office, i'm going to see it, you know, like the doctor flashes a light in my eyes, and I close my eyes and i'll see a silhouette of that pattern in my eyelids and i'll be like oh, yeah, Richard’s paintings.
Richard: It’s like an echo, or an echo of a presence - something you've taken in, but in a peripheral way.
Richard: I think we both make direct and indirect gestures toward pop culture - pointing to words, forms, color, objects, etc. We also play with echoes and residue of pop culture…these things that frame the ambience of our present - physically and by way of images
Umico: I would like to mention some of my thoughts behind the work that will be on display. A recurring topic that comes up within trans communities is shoes, you would hear someone say “I wish I could have worn those ruby red shoes as a child” or something to that matter. In getting to sculpt these artworks, I am reparenting a part of myself. I get to retroactively make the shoes that only exist within the wildest realms of my imagination and desires.
I also find it fascinating how shoes are one of the easiest avenues via which you can indicate class, wealth, gender identity, culture, religion, age, you know?
Richard: I think that's like a really wonderful description. The way you're thinking about and addressing the shoe - what the shoe as a form and object means and represents to different communities. I love that idea.
Umico: I also think there’s a similarity in our practices, where we've both gone through all of this development wherein we acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to make the artworks we produce but it’s retained a sense of playfulness and exploration.
When I’m making the shoes, it's a form of reparenting myself. Rearranging the neurons and synapses within my brain, healing yourself in some way. The process is introspective as opposed to prescriptive. I feel like your work has that sense of introspective wandering quality that resonates with me.
Richard: I think breaking from fixed notions of representation allows for play. And I’m thinking about representation broadly - words, images, colors, forms, etc. When you find yourself in a place where you're okay with this shift, it is quite liberating. I think you see this in the meandering and wandering logic of my work. I deal with a set of variables but allow them to take on different roles, become something else, and figure this out in process.
The potentiality that comes out of play is important - it goes back to this idea of trying to break from fixed notions surrounding language and representation. Both can be very dangerous and problematic as well - play and wandering become sort of a remedy.
I sense that in your work, it’s the nature of how your objects are made. There’s a kind of recycling that occurs, allowing the various parts and pieces to come together and take on another role - become this other thing. Then that thing, let's say the shoe, points to these experiences of the past but also allows for the potentiality and possibility of the future. Your sculptures are not fixed, they redirect our understanding of what’s represented.