There are more people alive today than have ever lived in all human history. Together, we are a new thing: a climate, a dimension, a plague, a god. If you believe in reincarnation; there are now more human beings than past souls to fill them, so everyone gets a second chance. If you believe in heaven and hell; both will shortly double in size. If you believe in neither; business goes on as usual, as all of the life that has gone before collapses into this moment. All the stories end and begin again today. But still the dead come back, they always come back. We live among their after lives.
You have felt them in a breath and seen them in clouds, walked through their dissolved bones and eaten them for breakfast. Sometimes they'll even figure out a way to talk to us. You know the routine, low moaning sounds, candles blown out and bathtubs filled up with blood. Screaming apparitions, bruised and gouged with bleeding eyeballs falling out of fractured skulls and snapped bones popping up through ruptured skin. We think they're trying to be scary, to freak us out. But they're just trying to talk to us; they don't have nice clothes and casual Fridays, they don't give a shit about appearances, they're dead. "This is how it is now", they're saying, "We're all fucked up over here! Yesterday we were just like you, snatching breath minute by minute, our reckless blood pumping away, a million stupid things on our minds."
It happens on a perfect day, as the stars fade towards an absolutely normal dawn. No miracles, no last minute premonition. The heart stops without warning, the wounds open silently, flowers to a quiet sun. The water closes over you, the weapon is always on target. The perfect murder, six billion witnesses and not one left alive to tell the tale.
What can you do? In this new body of work the narrative arc that Matthew Ritchie has been working on for the last several years seamlessly dissolves into an ‘information climate' where context and content are helplessly intermingled. Five large paintings, a hundred foot wall drawing and a floor work describe a strange, transformative cycle as a large drowning figure oscillates through phases of birth and death, shifting between the confining solidity of the shore and the murderously infinite possibilities of the sea.
This will be Matthew Ritchie's second solo show with Andrea Rosen Gallery. Since his last show, his work has been exhibited at Dallas Museum of Art, Mass MoCA, Castello Di Rivoli, MoMA, Sammlung Goetz, White Cube, L'ARC/Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Palais de Tokyo, ICA Philadelphia, Kettle's Yard, SFMoMA, CCAC and The Sydney Biennial.
'Games of Chance and Skill': a large-scale permanent installation will open at MIT on October 4, 2002.
Published in conjunction with the project Matthew Ritchie: Remanence, an interdisciplinary 18-month artist residency from 2013 to 2014, organized by Jenelle Porter, Mannion Family Senior Curator, with John Andress, Associate Director of Performing Arts, and Gabrielle Wyrick, Associate Director of Education.
Acclaimed in the art world for his room-size installations of paintings, sculpture, and digital projections, Matthew Ritchie’s work investigates architecture and the dynamics of culture. Named by Time magazine in 2001 as one of 100 innovators for the new millennium, his rich work draws from subjects as diverse as ancient myth and medieval alchemy to cutting-edge physics and contemporary politics. This artist-designed book will explore Ritchie’s large-scale artistic "interventions" in buildings designed by Morphosis among others, including the Guggenheim Museum and MIT.
Publisher: Rizzoli (November 25, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0847831086
ISBN-13: 978-0847831081
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg
Edited Eva Ebersberger, Daniela Zyman. Preface by Francesca von Habsburg.
Text by Benjamin Aranda, Brandon LaBelle, Helene Furján, Chris Lasch, Tony Myatt, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Matthew Ritchie, Roland Schöny, Mark Wasiuta.
Situated at the interaction of art, architecture, music, mathematics, cosmology and science, Matthew Ritchie's "The Morning Line" is a 33-foot high sound pavilion, constructed in aluminum and conceived in part as a successor to Edgard Varèse and Le Corbusier's pavilion for the 1958 World's Fair, and Fritz Bornemann's Expo '70 Pavilion. Designed in collaboration with New York-based architects Aranda Lasch, the Arup Advanced Geometry Unit and the Music Research Centre of York University, the structure was inspired by the cosmological theories of Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok, and offered a sonic environment in which newly commissioned works by well-known musicians were performed. This survey of the project includes a book containing Todd Eberle's photographs of the structure, a poster, a newspaper and a red vinyl LP with music by contemporary electronica musicians such as Alexej Borisov, Tommi Grönlund, Petteri Nisunen, Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai, Zsolt Olejnik, Finnbogi Petursson, Franz Pomassl, Terre Thaemlitz and Zavoloka.
Publisher: Moderne Kunst Nürnberg; Box edition (April 30, 2012)
ISBN-10: 3869842423
ISBN-13: 978-3869842424
Edited by Eva Ebersberger, Daniela Zyman.
Text by Caroline A. Jones, Peter Weibel, Benjamin Aranda, Chris Lasch, Mark Wasiuta, Bryce Dessner, Florian Hecker, Tony Myatt.
Extensive documentation of the worlds first traveling semasiographic structure; a collaborative environment conceived by Matthew Ritchie and designed with architects Aranda/Lasch, musician Bryce Dessner and scientist Paul Steinhardt.
Publisher: Walther Konig (February 1, 2009)
ISBN-10: 3865605664
ISBN-13: 978-3865605665
In 1995, British artist Matthew Ritchie embarked on an extraordinary undertaking: he set out to tell the story of everything, from the Big Bang onward. His tale was to be told in paintings and drawings through a core group of 49 characters drawn from sources as diverse as mythology, quantum physics, alchemy, gambling, biblical tales, and pulp fiction. With Proposition Player, Ritchie's first major solo museum exhibition and accompanying catalogue, his narrative has reached a "climax, collapse, and crisis"--the story has morphed into a game and Ritchie has created a veritable information casino. Accompanying the paintings and drawings for which the artist is internationally known are works in new media, including a 100-foot-long three-dimensional drawing, an interactive craps table with digital animation that invites viewers to roll the dice for the future of the universe, an enormous rubble floor mosaic that invites viewers to walk into the heart of the piece, and a deck of cards featuring Ritchie's cast of characters.
Publisher: Contemporary Arts Museum (January 31, 2004)
ISBN-10: 0936080841
ISBN-13: 978-0936080840
Matthew Ritchie: Incomplete Projects 01-07 was originally published from 2000 to 2006 as seven separate volumes to record a diverse group of projects. Institutional acknowledgements and credits accompanied each volume. Half of each print run was preserved to be collected in this final edition.
Awards: Best of Category in Graphic Design, I.D. Magazine, 2007
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Wild Card Crew, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Dallas Museum of Art; Artists Space; MIT; Parkett; Two Palms Press; and Portikus
Catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition "We Want to See Some Light," July 9 - August 21, 2005, at Portikus im Leinwandhaus, Frankfurt am Main. It is the seventh volume in a multi-part series titled Matthew Ritchie, Incomplete Projects.
Published in conjunction with Two Palms Press, 2004. It is the sixth volume in a multi-part series titled Matthew Ritchie, Incomplete Projects.
Catalogue published in conjunction with the permanent installation Games of Chance and Skill (2002), commissioned by the MIT Perecent for Art Program for the Albert and Barrie Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is the fifth volume in a multi-part series titled Matthew Ritchie, Incomplete Projects.
Catalogue published in conjunction with the Edition for Parkett 61, November 5, 2001:
MATTHEW RITCHIE
The Bad Need
2001
adhesive-backed vinyl and acrylic paint
36 x 41 inches (92.08 x 105.41 cm)
Edition of XVIII
Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity in the form of a signed and numbered artist's book.
Catalogue published in conjunction with the Edition for Artists Space:
MATTHEW RITCHIE
Sea State One
2001
Four color hand printed, pigminted relief print on Somerset paper.
16 x 32 inches
(40.6 x 81.3 cm)
Edition of 70
Published by Two Palms Press
Accompanied by one copy of the artist's book Sea State One: Incomplete Projects 03, containing manipulated images from The New Place, 2001, commissioned for "010101: Art in Technological Times," by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA.
Catalogue published for the exhibition "Concentrations 38: Matthew Ritchie," organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, and curated by Suzanne Weaver, January 23 - April 21, 2001. It is the second volume in a multi-part series titled Matthew Ritchie, Incomplete Projects.
Catalogue published for the exhibition "Matthew Ritchie," organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and curated by Bonnie Clearwater, March 31 - June 25, 2000. It is the first volume in a multi-part series titled Matthew Ritchie, Incomplete Projects.
Behold a stunning world, composed largely of water, where clothing changes people's behavior and time itself can be worn and discarded like cloth. Witness a father who takes his two boys out to sea, in flight from some menace at home, thus launching their adventures in a strange and dangerous territory. Artist Matthew Ritchie's striking images blend scientific diagramming with vivid, colorful renderings of the apocalypse, while writer Ben Marcus's cold prose plumbs the inner workings of two boys caught out at sea with a father whose costumes grow increasingly menacing. In this collaborative work, Ritchie's and Marcus's shared obsessions of mythology, physics and ancient texts have produced a conjunction of text and image in which people themselves are merely costumes for the darker needs that drive them.
Published by Artspace Books
Hardcover, 6.25 x 8.25 in. / 90 pgs / 16 color
Publication date 5/2/2002
ISBN 9781891273032
Published on the occassion of the exhibition "Mythopoeia: Projects by Matthew Barney, Luca Buvoli and Matthew Ritchie," curated by Jill Snyder. Presented at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio, February 12 - May 2, 1999.
Published in 1996 by Galerie Météo, Paris, Basilico Fine Arts, New York, and C/O - Atle Gerhardsen, Oslo
2002
oil and marker on canvas
88 x 121 inches (223.52 x 307.34 cm)
ARG# RM2002-011
2002
oil and marker on canvas
88 x 121 inches (223.52 x 307.34 cm)
ARG# RM2002-011
2002
oil and marker on canvas
88 x 121 inches (223.52 x 307.34 cm)
ARG# RM2002-008
2002
oil and marker on canvas
88 x 154 inches (223.52 x 391.16 cm)
ARG# RM2002-009
2002
oil and marker on canvas
99 x 121 inches (251.46 x 307.34 cm)
ARG# RM2002-007
2002
oil and marker on canvas
88 x 154 inches (223.52 x 391.16 cm)
ARG# RM2002-010
2002
enamel on Sintra, aluminum, and one CNC milled foam head made in collaboration with Grace Dunham, age 10
Approximate dimensions: 10'5" x 24'10" x 10'3" (317.5 x 731.5 x 312.4 cm)
ARG# RM2002-012
2002
acrylic on wall;
Approximate dimensions: 12' x 97'9" x 8'
Edition of 3 with one AP
ARG# RM2002-013