Rikke Kühn Riegels
May 6-28, 2016
In A State of Impermanence
As a bridge between an initial idea and a final result, the model plays a central role in the work of the architect. It serves as an important tool in this process of realization as it allows ideas to become tangible, testifiable, modifiable. In my work as a painter, I also work with architectural models, but unlike the architect mine do not only function as tools to enhance my understanding of basic spacial problems like perspective, depth, proportion etc. Rather they are themselves the subjects of my attention.
Architecture is often thought of and also depicted as the stable foundation for modern transient life. The rocks for city dwellers. However, architecture is man made, a result of imagination and craftsmanship. What interests me about architectural models is that they so explicitly point to that feature and thus remind us about the fragility and impermanence of our physical surroundings. They invoke the same type of insights we get in moments of catastrophe, as when we see buildings or even cities torn apart after earthquakes, hurricanes or times of war. But in contrast to the ruin architectural models offer us such perspective in their virtue of being something not yet existing rather than something not anymore existing. They express hope, potential and dreams. And they remind us about the mobility and lightness of the structures we take as the most cemented framework for our lives, however terrifying or optimistic that might be. These structures might be concrete walls or they might be the dogmas we set up as points of navigation through life. In other words, architecture models contain a much richer meaning as they refer to a complexity that goes far beyond their apparent status as tools in a process. This richness is what I intended to bring about as a topic of reflection with the series of paintings that I call “In a State of Impermanence.”
Rikke Kühn Riegels is a Danish artist living in Washington DC. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and art spaces in Denmark, Sweden and Washington DC. After finishing her master’s degree in philosophy at The New School in New York she moved to Washington DC in 2015 where she became part of Brewmaster’s Studios at The Heurich House Museum. Rikke Kühn Riegels has been a visiting artist at The Corcoran School of the Art and Design and a guest lecturer at CUA’s school of architecture.
