Installation Views: "Heads Up!" by Matt + Miles Ritchie

March 7th, 2020 - March 28th, 2020

Recess is pleased to present Heads Up!, a joint exhibition by father-son duo Matt Ritchie and Miles Ritchie. Heads Up! will feature a new collection of original works as well as painted comic books, pins, prints, stickers, custom masks, and more!

Installation photos by Shaun Roberts.

As father and son, the two share undeniably similar artistic styles as well as a mutual love for comics, film, TV, music, video games, and everything pop. Both in their individual works and in their collaborative ventures, the duo pays homage to a vast range of pop culture subjects - from the 1970s-era Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica of Matt's early years, to the Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of Miles' childhood, to our modern day CGI-heavy superhero multiverses, and everything in between. Though they are inspired by many of the same pop culture icons, their joint exhibitions offer perspective from two very different generations - while Matt's presentation is steeped in decades of fandom, Miles renders beloved characters with fresh eyes. 

Each with his own individual style and personal fandom history, the Ritchies use wood as their common base medium - distilling all their favorite 2-dimensional characters and icons into crisply crafted and invitingly tactile 3-dimensional pieces. Matt often adds heavily layered paints to embody brightly colored graphics and crossover humor, creating a stylistic flatness that seems both an ode to its 2-D inspirations as well as an outright rejection of it. Miles, however, tends to incorporate more natural exposed wood of the relief form itself - allowing light, shadow, grain, and texture to tell a story different than his father's.

As the name suggests, Heads Up! is a collection of the heads of Matt and Miles' fandom favorites. In contrast to their previous explorations of figurative action, posture, environmental context, interactivity, and object representation, this new body of direct facial portraits presents a streamlined overview of the combined Ritchie fandom - allowing the audience to view Heads Up! head-on.

Heads Up! opens Saturday, March 7th with an evening reception from 6pm - 9pm. The exhibition will be on view through March 28th, 2020. The entire collection of original works and limited-edition, Recess-exclusive collectibles will be available online HERE starting Thursday, March 12th.