San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Gregory Rick: Various paintings
Gregory Rick grew up in South Minneapolis. He received his BFA from California College of the Arts in 2019 and his MFA from Stanford University in 2022.
In the Bay Area, his work has been exhibited in San Francisco at California College of the Arts, Bass and Reiner Gallery, Ever Gold Gallery, and Slash.
Rick has won the Yamaguchi printmaking award, the Nathan Oliveira fellowship, and the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award. Rick also served in the 101st Airborne in Iraq and received the Combat Infantry Badge. After his enlistment was up, Rick was unhoused for a period.
His large-scale paintings frequently address themes of racial conflict, battle, protest and systemic injustices.
What’s on view: Rick’s nine paintings, shown over two galleries, use a variety of media (acrylic, wax pastel, enamel, oil stick, felt-tip pen) and depict both real world events like the 1992 Los Angeles riots and 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, as well as larger societal issues like mass incarceration. The works on view are at times frantic in their activity, anxietyinducing in their crowded compositions (at times resembling 20th century Mexican political murals) and ultimately powerful in what they confront. Each work offers a deeply felt narrative you can easily become absorbed in, trying to decode the many figures and elements.
In the artist’s words: “I wanted to have each one of these paintings or narratives be a chapter. I had it starting out with thinking about my life, as my autobiography, and in what ways does that connect to larger themes? That was the guiding force. I feel like they gave me the space for the rhythm of the paintings to work and to be able to step into the paintings.
In my work, I tell stories.
“To me, the show being free is huge. I think of being in Minneapolis and being homeless and going to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts because it was free and I could always sit there. I think that was my first link, my first conversation with painters from the past. I would sit in front of Max Beckmann paintings, and nobody would mess with me. I was just another person in the gallery.” On SECA: “Things are very charged, and things are coming to a head. A lot of concerns are being raised, and a lot of historic injustices are being stood
up to (in the art world). We also just came out of the pandemic and I feel like all these things that are happening also connect us (artists), and we’re connected through our practices. I think we’ll be the kind of friends where maybe we haven’t seen each other in a while but when we do, we can jump right in where we left off. (SECA) is a unique experience to go through with these other people.”