Richard McDonough: An Anniversary
October 26th - November 23rd
Opening reception Saturday, October 26th 6-9pm
Gym presents An Anniversary, Richard McDonough’s first solo show in New York. Richard McDonough is an artist based in New York, working primarily in painting and sculpture. Research interests include: traditions in parade and procession, typologies of American homes and property (lawns), and rudimentary construction practices as seen through compressed, aerial, or “miniature” view
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Coming upon this house, its weathered gray, you felt time stretching a bit too thin. The shingles were not yet defaced, and in their slow rotting a pristine history could be read: the thick and wet air from the river arrived here one day and did not leave, did not stop wrinkling and rusting all it touched. The townspeople left with the mist and then only the whistle of spring peepers remained.
A lack of magic elsewhere in the town drew you. Here, in an adjacent shed, a classmate unveiled a brand new smoking machine whose complexities overshadowed its innocuous drug, and stories circulated of incandescent reptiles in the brush, released by an unhinged pet store owner. An arching weeping willow at the base of the valley stood wide, with petals pressed flatly by an imprinted family tree.
You looked for familiar names in the cemetery, but the surnames and lichen blooms just notated some kind of mangled song. The headstones were all listing in the soft ground like unkempt teeth falling into a great green maw. And slowly this phonetic trance began to resemble a familiar chorus, and the warm sound was coming from the gray house. Peering through the worn slats, you waited for your eyes to adjust to the dark.
Photos by Shark Senesac