Ron Rizk, “Business Machine”, 2013.
Ron Rizk’s paintings nestle familiar objects into gravity-defying positions. Whether a paper plane that seems to tenuously balance on a bank, or a toy train that resists careening down a slope, its clear that Rizk has mastered his own tension-filled take on trompe l’oeil. The artist’s show, “New Paintings”, at Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Bergamot Station, Santa Monica displays the wonderful ways in which Rizk utilizes folk-like object/subjects to engage in perspectival play that beautifully stimulates our imagination.
Over three decades ago, objects had become a central theme in the paintings of Ron Rizk; from metal tools and kitchen implements to recent self-made paper toys. Rizk says, “I like things with character that I can create with a narrative around the meaning to me, while the viewer has their own meaning. For a while, I used shallow space like Harnett and Peto and that has changed to defying gravity now.” Unlike the trompe l’oeil painters Peto and Harnett, Rizk’s paintings have always been more narrative and less like presenting a stage for the art.
Ron Rizk, “Dream House”, 2015.
In the recent paintings, Rizk has created paper objects and set them onto a mysterious position of resting or floating in each landscape. With “Dream House”, a paper house sits precariously atop a pile of large rocks, a totally unrealistic position. But the object does not necessarily exists in space defined by the laws of the natural world. “In painting there is no law of physics,” says Rizk, “so things float, as they won’t fall out of the painting!”
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All of Ron Rizk’s paintings are oil on panel. Influenced to paint on panel years ago, Rizk had lived in England and visited the National Gallery in London to repeatedly see 15th to 17th century Dutch paintings housed there. Painting on panel is very different from painting on canvas, as the wood does not absorb the paint like canvas, and brush strokes have deviant patterns of appearance. With a fondness for the hard surface, Rizk continues to adeptly paint his original works on panel, allowing us to see the variety of brushstroke patterns that add luster to each part of the composition.
Ron Rizk, “Summer’s End”, 2014.
In the painting “Summer’s End”, various brush strokes comprise the long wood lines of the canoe, leading to the rounded gestural pattern of the blue sky. The picture and title evokes the nostalgia of good times had by a lake, while simultaneously presenting an otherworldly quality. “It has a sense of mystery and ambiguity, with an implied presence of human activity,” explains Rizk. “The boat may appear on the bar gravel or as floating. I am not tied to rules of pictorial representation.” Given this kind of freedom, his objects call on us to unreservedly invent our own scenarios.
RonRizk, “Waiting”, 2015.
In “Waiting”, Rizk uses a decoy (one of his longstanding object preferences); here it is a swan decoy. Skilled in numerous genres of painting techniques, he has established a traditional perspective reminiscent of renaissance paintings, with a life-like swan that hovers, or maybe sits, perilously on a mound away from the water. Rizk says, “The deep space is condensed less than I could have made it to also have that diorama effect, and the swan is floating or not.”
The new works of Ron Rizk are are expertly made, combining skills and influences that span the Renaissance, trompe l’oeil, and pop surrealism. But the charm of Rizk’s paintings exists in our connection to the story they tell, not to the artist’s painterly devices. They are serious, whimsical, and challenge us to freely conceptualize, fantasize and daydream.
“New Paintings” by Ron Rizk showing at Lora Schlesinger Gallery (2525 Michigan Ave. B5b, Santa Monica, CA 90404) through December 5, 2015.
Images courtesy of Lora Schlesinger Gallery, ©Ron Rizk.
