Matthew Ritchie: April 25

Matthew Ritchie
April 25, 2007, 6:30pm
National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South (20th Street) between Park Avenue and Irving Place

The American Federation of Arts is pleased to announce that Matthew Ritchie, whose conceptually driven work finds inspiration in philosophy, physics, and mythology, will speak at the next lecture of the AFA’s spring season of ArtTalks. Ritchie will discuss the multiple fields of influence that inform his body of work.

The event will be held on Wednesday, April 25, 2007, at 6:30 p.m. in the Sculpture Court of the National Arts Club, located at 15 Gramercy Park South (20th Street) between Park Avenue and Irving Place, New York. Following the talk, audience members are invited to participate in a question-and-answer session and then to join the artist for a reception.

Seating is limited and reservations are required. For fees and reservations, please call 212.988.7700 ext. 210 or send an email to arttalks@afaweb.org. Attire is business casual.

Included in Time magazine’s “100 Innovators of the New Millennium” for his explorations of “the unthinkable or the not-yet-thought,” Matthew Ritchie has been no less ambitious than to attempt to represent the entire universe and the structures of knowledge and belief we employ to interpret and visualize it. His work considers both the attempts and the limits of human consciousness to comprehend the universe’s vastness. Though often described as a painter, Ritchie works in a variety of media, including paper, prints, projections, installations, freestanding sculpture, Web sites, and short stories, which tie his sprawling works together into a narrative structure. Replete with allusions drawn from religious ideologies, historical forces, and theoretical principles of science, his work is continually expanding and evolving, while investigating and challenging the complex interactions between art and various systems of information.

Born in London in 1964, Matthew Ritchie lives and works in New York. He received a BFA from Camberwell School of Art, London, and attended Boston University. Ritchie’s work has been widely exhibited, including solo exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; MASS MoCA; SFMoMA; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, among others. His work was also included in the Whitney Biennial (1997), the Sydney Biennale (2002), and the São Paulo Bienale (2004). His work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A frequent lecturer and contributor to several contemporary art journals, he is the author of the recent artist’s book Matthew Ritchie: Incomplete Projects 01-07.

ArtTalks is presented by Target.
Support has also been provided by the Joseph and Sylvia Slifka Foundation, Inc.


The AFA is a nonprofit institution that organizes art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishes exhibition catalogues, and develops education programs. For more information on the AFA, please visit http://www.afaweb.org