White Room: Rick Myers

White Columns is pleased to present “While Blinking Repeatedly”, the first New York solo exhibition by the Holyoke, MA-based British artist Rick Myers. Talking about his approach Myers has described his practice as a process-driven form of “poetic investigation.” Working across media, including text, sculpture, print making, photography, installation, and book works, Myers’ practice is rooted in an expanded notion of ‘drawing’, a methodology that acknowledges and embraces chance and ephemerality. For his exhibition at White Columns Myers will present a discrete group of interrelated works including: Untitled (while blinking repeatedly), a text work applied directly to the wall by transferring smoke from cast metal type forms; Before and After Breath a suite of five prints made by ‘printing’ a light bulb, placed on carbon paper, in a fifty ton industrial press, creating a visual ‘echo’ of a single moment, the destruction of the bulb and release of a vacuum; and 15 x 4 x Photo Booth Actions a sequence of photo booth prints that record Myers’ attempts to photographically capture the ‘suspension’ of individual sheets of standard writing paper in a public photo booth. Drawing from the legacies of both minimalism and conceptual art, in these and other works Myers privileges not only poetic associations he also exposes the formal and material conditions that are inherent to his process, creating a body of work that is at once cerebral, visceral, psychological and emotional.

Rick Myers lives and works in Holyoke, MA. Originally from Manchester, England he moved to the U.S. in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include: Corner College, Zurich (2009); and No. 12 Gallery, Tokyo (2007); Group exhibitions include: ‘Poetical Works from the Library and Archive 1908 -2008’, Library at Tate Britain, London; ‘Nieves – An Exhibition’, Printed Matter, New York (both 2009.) He has recently published three artist’s books – including ‘Bite Marks in Paper’ and ‘Paper Poems’ – with innovative Swiss publisher Nieves. (www.nieves.ch for more information.)