The Big-Picture Man

By Benjamin Nugent

You can stop looking for the social commentary and pop-cultural references that are present in so much recent art. Nearly everything you need to know to understand Matthew Ritchie's paintings you learned in physics class, and fittingly, his installations, which incorporate his paintings, can be massive. Parents and Children measures 23 ft. by 54 ft. by 16 ft. and literally spills down the wall and onto the floor, the overflow composed of little pieces of plastic that together form patchwork carpets of abstract art. Each of his canvases swims with details. Humans, angels and the devil sometimes lurk in the corners. But the main focus is on the elemental forces--time, energy, gravity--that Ritchie brings together in intense knots of color.

A native of London and a graduate of that city's Camberwell School of Art, Ritchie, 37, says he developed an interest in science in the early '90s after flipping idly through textbooks he found in trash cans around New York University dorms while he was moonlighting as a superintendent in Manhattan apartment buildings. In the Big Bang and other cosmological transformations that can never be realistically depicted, he saw a void his imagination could fill. The result, says fellow painter Carroll Dunham, is work that is "much more abstract than most art that has a narrative basis. And much more narrative than most abstract art."

At a time when many of his contemporaries have abandoned painting to explore the artistic possibilities of film, video and even cyberspace, Ritchie stands out for the fresh, 21st century approach he has brought to that most traditional of art forms. It's "old-fashioned to talk about things in terms of media," he says. "What's become increasingly obvious is you just do what you need to do to get the job done. There are some things painting is good at."

--By Benjamin Nugent