Press release

Baldwin Gallery is delighted to present our very first show with acclaimed contemporary artist Matthew Ritchie. Ritchie’s work visually illuminates the natural pattern and symmetry in the ascendance of information from the theoretical to the schematic. The resulting supernova portraiture, the drawings and paintings, are the physical channels of formula translation: the product illuminating the mathematical calligraphy of process. In this body of work, catalyst mylar source-code drawings draft the attendant wall-decal augmented paintings on linen. The paintings are schematic structures, the result an explication of a generated channel sequence; Ritchie’s subpopulations of mark making and color inter-wired with texture, repetition, and shadow. The work’s visual algorithm elegantly renders the underlying code, and in its essential beauty exposes the reverence inherent in Ritchie’s framework equation.

Ritchie received his BFA from London’s Camberwell School of Art, and attended Boston University in Boston, MA. Ritchie’s work has been exhibited at the Dallas Museum of Art; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; MASS MoCA; the SFMoMA; The Guggenheim, and the MoMA, among others. His work has also been a part of the 1997 Whitney Biennial, the 2002 Sydney Biennale, and the 2004 São Paulo Art Biennial.

Baldwin Gallery is also most pleased to show the sixth body of work presented with us by the sculptor George Stoll. Stoll’s work plays upon the meanings of perfection through the visual exploration of the mass produced vs the hand crafted. Stoll’s exquisite, labor intensive facsimiles illuminate the nobility of the familiar object. The delicate sculpture makes a fetish of the idea of the object rather than the object itself; its beauty underlining the absurdity of meretricious availability blurring the lipstick line between beloved sweetheart and whore. Stoll’s lovingly modeled detritus stands transformed by our intimacy: starkly lovely and sanctified.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1954, George Stoll lives and works in Los Angeles. His art is found in such public collections as the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, Brandeis University-Rose Art Museum, University of Washington-Henry Art Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Images are available upon request. Please call 970.920.9797 for further information.