| The photographs of Dietmar Busse and Roger Ricco at Sara Tecchia Roma, New York, make for a compelling yet elusive narrative. Busse and Ricco both have in common this sense of solitude that is punctuated by an intellectual focus that runs the gamut between the romantic and stone cold aloneness. For this writing, I’ve chosen to focus on the work and wisdom of Roger Ricco. I’ve known Roger for some time as one of the two co-owner, founder, directors of Ricco Maresca gallery, but never knew he was an artist. And it seems I have been missing something quite extraordinary. |  |
Take a Closer Look – D. Dominick Lombardi
The photographs of Dietmar Busse and Roger Ricco at Sara Tecchia Roma, New York, make for a compelling yet elusive narrative. Busse and Ricco both have in common this sense of solitude that is punctuated by an intellectual focus that runs the gamut between the romantic and stone cold aloneness. For this writing, I’ve chosen to focus on the work and wisdom of Roger Ricco. I’ve known Roger for some time as one of the two co-owner, founder, directors of Ricco Maresca gallery, but never knew he was an artist. And it seems I have been missing something quite extraordinary.
The following is a series of questions and answers between Roger and me where I hope to reveal the muse behind these timeless and unforgettable works.
D. Dominick Lombardi: There is this sense of the Romantic in your work. In speaking with Sara Tecchia, she also mentioned that your work reminded her of Caravaggio. I think she is speaking of the theatrical lighting and the physicality of the works that together allude to this otherworldliness. Is this your intention?
Roger Ricco: Yes, it is in a way. Let’s step back for a moment. A few years ago, when I broke my foot, I was faced with limitations of movement. I started this series of photographs, with the intention of making them look like paintings. I am also a painter and I had often looked at many of my earlier photographs as preliminary sketches. But I discovered in these intended photo sketches some very potent works. There is this ethereal light that I captured. You know, I am in the studio and I think, let’s do it this way and work with browns—which I never work with in my paintings—add some light at key points and that was it. Of course, a lot has to do with some of the shiny objects I use. There are those glints, the things that catch my eye.
And I’ve always worked with sets or still life, but these were more theatrical. In fact, someone asked me about doing a set design. So that is where we come back to Caravaggio, the layered theatrics. The depth that exceeds the relatively shallow space I am working in.
DDL: Let’s talk a little bit about your subjects, the objects in the photographs. Where are they from?
RR: The subjects do not come from any particular idea or theory. It’s not like I am going around photographing dead toads and then trying to be profound about it. These are things that are lying around in the studio. Remember, I couldn’t get around on that broken foot. The first piece is the best example, the one with the bird and the insect, Small Event 001 (Bird and Insect).
There were these boards lying on the studio floor, which had washes of dark colors on them. I just grabbed them and anchored them on one side to create a corner and worked with that as my set, so to speak.
I once worked with Irving Penn and loved his backdrops that were sort of dirty, which, in his expert hands, became lush. Even the warped cardboard on the bottom and the so-called set I created, that warped element along the bottom helped to destroy the horizon line that makes the results more compelling.
So, for Small Event 001, I put the floor and the two sides together, a little light, a common clip-on type, my digital camera for convenience and speed, then I hung the a sheet of glass from copper wire, took two sticker decals I happen to have (the bird and the insect) and pasted them on the glass. This brought me the spur for small events: implied time, action, somewhat dramatic things happening in time.
DDL: I see in your work, a power that is greater than the some of its parts.
RR: Yes, I am glad you put it that way. Everything I create has an intended beauty, so to speak, that is worthy of being captured. It is serendipitous. No big ideas. It has to be pretty damn straight-forward. Then there comes the dialog, a story that is told to me as it is happening.
One of the things I do not like, is when things become localized. They loose their continuance. I like hearing from the people that see my work, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” The closer you look, the more there is.
Like when I go and sit on a bench near the Hudson and just observe. A lot is going on, visually, aurally and it gets more subtle as time goes on. Things go further and further in.
