James Rieck. One: Number 31, 2017. Oil on canvas, 24 x 72 in / 61 x 183 cm.
A disembodied voice floats through the room, a soft falsetto that sweetly croons, Step into a world / where there’s no one left / but the very best / No MC can test.
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And then the beat drops. One, two. One, two. You snap out of the reverie, back to the here and now, as your heart throbs, your blood flows, the bass pounds. You’re flush, radiating heat, feeling alive, overcome by the moment. Rapture.
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It is everywhere you want to be, this sensuous feeling of release. Of being and becoming, of presence so compete it feels like a disembodied experience. It is that moment when body, mind, and soul are one, the ephemeral made eternal. It is so intense it only last a moment but it feels as though time has stopped. It is being high in its greatest sense, released from the mortal realm.
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It is here that we are free from the banality of daily life, connecting the sacred and the profane through the experience of art. As American artist James Rieck observes, “It’s easy to lose yourself in a painting, or any form of art, as a means to escape from the world or the self. There is no limit to where it can take you, if you let it.”
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James Rieck. Le Bonheur de Vivre, 2017. Oil on canvas, 24 x 72 in / 61 x 183 cm
In his Rapture, his newest series of work currently on view at Lyons Wier Gallery, New York, through November 4, Rieck evokes the feeling of bliss that exists in the intersection between art and archetype. Rieck’s subjects are models extrapolated from mid-twentieth century magazines that evoke bourgeois ideals, and sets them inside museums and galleries alongside classic masterpieces of Western art that use sex as their subject.
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By juxtaposing these figures of pristine Puritanical splendor beside works like Matisse’s Le Bonheur de Vivre, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Bather Drying Herself, and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, we step into a world where art’s power and influence in both demystified and amplified at the same time.
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This is in large part due to Rieck’s framing of the work, tight crops that leave everything above the nose out. The eyes, being the windows to the soul, are invisible, and in doing this, not only is the subject rendered anonymous but makes space for us to participate. The model is not a person but a vessel into which we can slip, breathing in the rarefied air of the work of art.
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James Rieck. Jeune Garçon au Cheval, 2017. Oil on canvas, 24 x 72 in / 61 x 183 cm.
But perhaps more than the framing it is Rieck’s color palette that renders us in a state of limpid titillation. Each work is a symphony of hues and tones that create an intense feeling of synesthesia. Does anyone else want a cupcake or an ice cream cone, a lemon tart or a slice of strawberry shortcake?
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The high is so sumptuous you can literally taste it, smell, it, breathe it in. It is like a bouquet of violets and a tall glass of lemonade. It is a spell the whisks you away, like the loveliest lust. It is the safest sex, non me tangere, yet you still can’t help but feel like something has transpired.
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Rieck explains, “Museums and art galleries are designed for you to let yourself ‘go’ in public. They are vehicles for the art experience of private passions in shared settings…. We can all want to feel the real pleasures that come from art and the places that hold it.”
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Amen.
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James Rieck. Baigneuse S’Eessuyant, 2017. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in / 61 x 91 cm.