Christopher Rico

La Madre

2016

Painting - oil on canvas

Christopher Rico's oil paintings offer a momentary state of communion with the viewer. Within a strict black and white palette referencing both the anatomical and the landscape, Rico seeks to reveal a contemporary sense of the sublime using light, depth, and the abyss as a metaphor of the divine. His painting practice merges subtle compositional references to religious art of the Renaissance with a contemporary secular sense of the spiritual. Through a process of pouring and manipulating paint on canvas with minimal contact, as well as using more traditional wet-on-wet technique, Rico evolves his compositions to a point just before entropy. His oil paintings create a space where dialogue can take place, embracing the universal and the mystical through abstraction.