Michael Raedecker’s show, now, at GRIMM gallery was absolutely fantastic. I don’t necessarily connect to gallery press releases as I often find them too wordy, and over the top, but GRIMM’s was spot on.

“From a distance, the flat and rectangular objects that Raedecker has produced have the appearance of the things we once called paintings. In the studio he has engineered a mechanism of capture, which manufactures products that contradict our efforts to form certainty. Instead, as we approach the objects, getting closer to the surface, it dawns that our impressions stem from fantasy, evoking a distinction between imagination and reality. In short, the viewer has been assigned an active task through which their interaction with the image can be felt and perception becomes tangible and within our grasp. Like a focussing lens, looking at Raedecker’s evocative concoctions veers between two realities: psychical and material.” (GRIMM)

“The closer we get to the traps, which are disguised as paintings, the more the veil of illusion falls away. Images become paint, paint becomes thread and thread becomes simply itself. The proximity of the canvas surface shatters the viewers’ inventions. No-one is closer to the surface than Raedecker who spends hours going in and out of the surface, from the front to the back “and back again”.” (GRIMM)

“His images have the illusion of depth, from the prints, but also physical depth, from the applied handiwork, which he describes as deriving in part from his background in fashion. And although they’re pretty—the adornment by turns sparkling or lush—they are also direful, a sense felt in his previous shows at Grimm and, before that, at Andrea Rosen Gallery. The works parallel visitation (2021) and monument (2022) share an image of treehouses painted and embroidered in green on pitch black, possible havens that may instead be ominous—a kudzu-swamped redoubt occupied by endangered foragers approaching the end of the human world.” (Noah Dillon theguide.art)

Among other studies, London based Raedecker (b. 1963) received a BA in Fashion Design. He was also shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Neither a surprise.

I rushed back from a weekend away as I needed to see the show again before it closed. I got there for the last hour of the exhibition, and am so glad I did.