Richard Meier: Timepieces 50 Years of Collage
Exhibition dates: October 15 – December 7, 2013
“I have been producing collages ‘for nearly fifty five years, many of the early ones were done during long flights or in the waiting areas at airports. Despite their inherent uniqueness layered compositions of “found” papers, shapes and colors – these collages are very much of a piece with my architecture. As a presentation drawing is no substitute for the physical experience of architecture, visual power of the collages derives from ‘the suggestion of “space” that we do not see: small fragments of letters and pictures with their own histories, former uses and meanings.”
- Richard Meier
Galerie Gmurzynska is proud to present a show of collages by renowned artist and architect Richard Meier. The exhibition will focus on eighty collages produced from the mid 1980s to now. In 2012 a selection of the collages was exhibited in a show of Richard Meier’s work at Cornell University.
Richard Meier is one of the most influential architects in the world, as well as the youngest-ever recipient of the Pritzker Prize. Among his many projects known world-wide are the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Getty Center, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; the Jubilee Church, Rome; Museum für angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt; Museum Frieder Burda, Baden Baden and the Arp Museum in Remagen-Rolandseck, Germany.
Like his architecture his collages are very clean and methodical on the surface, the images constrained by constant grid that is not changing. Within the grid however the images range from the erotic to painterly illustration. Painters such as Picasso, Cezanne and Rodchenko make their way into the collages, as do other influences such as film and opera. The works also offer deep insights into Meier’s private life. Often the collages are deeply personal and autobiographical, using everyday collected objects such as theatre and travel tickets to intimate photographs.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with documentary images and an introduction by Richard Meier, as well as an essay by Judd Tully.
Collages: "It's a private thing that I do. My architecture is public. This is private."
- Richard Meier
BITS OF INSPIRATION: “Whatever I have at hand, whatever I pick up: cards, tickets, photographs, things I cut out of magazines, things people give me, business cards, invitations. Whatever passes through my hands during the day, I kind of put in an envelope. It finds its way into a collage, sometimes years later.”
- Richard Meier, from New York Times, April 1st, 2011
"Works in various stages of evolution are left in notebooks and on the shelves of my studio left for months or even years to await their own period of development. […] They are for me an adjunct and a passion related to my life as an architect."
- Richard Meier, from a lecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, 2012
“The professional portfolio of Richard Meier, 76, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, includes dozens of geometric designs spanning decades and continents. On Sundays, he contributes to another body of work, using scraps of found paper to create collages, a collection of which will eventually appear in a book.”
- New York Times, April 1st, 2011
"Meier has an eye, and a mind to use it. He doesn't create all those collages at night at home for nothing. The collage making is his midnight boxing ring. It keeps the hand and the eye trained."
- John Hejduk, American architect (New York Five)