Richard Aldrich, Untitled, 2008, Oil and wax on panel, 19+5⁄8 by 13+1⁄2 inches (500 mm × 340 mm)
Although mostly
abstract and
casual, Aldrich's paintings also betray a distinctly literary sensibility, even as he targets what he has called the essential "unwordliness of experience." Snippets of text and random words-UFO, the numeral 4-appear as
decals or pencil scrawls, while lines incised with the back of a brush suggest writing once removed. Taciturn pictures carry evocative and ungainly verbal appendages in the form of elliptical press releases or titles like Large Obsessed with Hector Guimard, 2008, a nod to the architect of Paris's Art Nouveau metro stations, or If I Paint Crowned I've Had It, Got Me, 2008, a telling paraphrase of
Cézanne explaining he would be ruined if he tried to paint the "crowned" effect of a still life rather than the thing itself.[2]