June 2, 2011—July 2, 2011 | Reception Thursday June 2nd 6-8pm

James Harris Gallery is pleased to present the fourth solo exhibition by Chicago artist Richard Rezac. Indicative: Sculpture 1982-1994 showcases nine works and acts as a concise survey of the artist’s early sculpture. This exhibition identifies the core practices and strategies Rezac developed to investigate geometric abstraction. This fertile twelve year period was transformative in establishing a personal vocabulary of intimate, reductive form emphasizing repetition, and positive and negative space. The individual works circumscribe a subset of the artist’s output but they also act as an illumination on his 30 year career.

Rezac creates subtle compositions imbued with dynamic tension. He sensitively chooses the materials, of plaster, wood, or bronze to investigate ideas of density, division, juncture, presence and void. Rezac’s sculptures are intimate and quietly inform the spaces they occupy. Each work is purposely situated, whether on floor, mounted on the wall or hanging above. His sculptures push the conventions of sculpture through its placement or location and the consequent relationship to the viewer.

On an early trip to Japan, Rezac studied the aesthetics of Zen gardens and how they only reveal their serenity through changing viewpoints. His interest in Asian Art generally and American Minimalism, along with a penchant for Baroque Architecture established a personal vocabulary of geometry infused with its application within human scale, as the works tend toward a relationship to the body and the viewer. They maintain a rhythm but with intervals to suggest a sense of intimate familiarity. This contemplative atmosphere continues throughout this show and in his work today.

Richard Rezac’s sculpture has been shown nationally and internationally, most notably in a 2006 survey of his work at the Portland Art Museum. Other venues include Yale University Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Rezac has received Fellowship Grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Tiffany Foundation and in 2006, the coveted Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. He lives and works in Chicago.