With two new bodies of work—a quartet of triptychs and a constellation of sculptures—Ricki Dwyer inextricably intertwines heart and mind in A Mobilizing Force. The New York-based artist has crafted an intricate choreography between erudite conceptualization and intuitive expression, controlled manipulation and agency, and the individual and the collective. Within the four walls of Volume Gallery’s exhibition space, this collection of dichotomies coalesce to form a multi-layered call to action against the bodies in power—people (micro) and government (macro)—enacting violence on other bodies abroad and domestically.
While the works in the exhibition are impactful independently, they are greater than the sum of their parts. Their power is exponential. On a material level, the woven objects embody power in numbers as Dwyer brings individual threads together to make a more robust substrate. Each painting is a swatch of a repeat pattern only genuinely discernable when placed within its corresponding triptych. As the picture becomes whole, their conceptual underpinnings become amplified. What at face value may appear serene and passive starts vibrating with potential energy.
Distorted letters that read “IMPERIAL BOOMERANG” stretch across the edges of one of the triptychs. This theory, best elucidated by Michel Foucault in 1976, underscores how inevitably domestic policing will mirror the militarized tactics of control governments employ overseas. This concept, gaining momentum among organizers, is an anchoring theme for the show’s impetus to prompt people to reject passivity and instead demand change. The rest of the paintings create visual and narrative echoes reverberating Dwyer’s insistent question: how long until we come together to do something about it?
Dwyer’s paintings are further imbued with meaning through the dying process he has developed based on chromatography, a chemical analysis in which the components of a mixture are separated through a fluid solvent towards a solid substrate. The artist dips his textiles into synthetic dye baths, which spread upwards through capillary action and split into various colors, creating a gradient. Dye particles have different molecular agencies, causing them to move at varying speeds and distances. For example, the Brillant Blue particles within the purple dye Dwyer used to color one of the triptychs move farther and faster than any other dye particles. This chemical process mirrors the spread of humanity in nature and how some people are quicker to act than others. Dwyer has painstakingly tested many dyes to study their behavior. The result is a delicate balance between human control and material agency.
A sculptural “footnote” accompanies each triptych. Dwyer refers to the grouping of four sculptures as a constellation because, while vastly different, they share the same DNA. Made of a single swath of textile, he cuts it into fragments and then gives them form. The sculptures have a bodily quality with metal skeletons and extremities, providing structure to the soft fiber. As Dwyer puts it, they represent “action rendered in form.” Their creation is catalyzed by intuitive feeling and a haptic understanding of materials rather than intellectual drive.
Hung on the wall with nails, one sculpture features a cast aluminum bat representing intuitive navigation of the world. Like the bat uses sonar, the artist engages in care and empathy. Another sculpture features plaques referencing Joseph Campbell's A Hero’s Journey as a critique of the trope in the Western epic canon prescribing a course of action as an individual pursuit that only a “chosen one,” typically a boy or man, can take.
Two other triptychs have varying levels of distress, physically representing the metaphorical decay of social fabric. The aesthetic deterioration has been carefully planned, designed, and woven into the textile by Dwyer, underscoring how the erosion results from actions and decisions made by people who can be held accountable rather than external uncontrollable factors. Stretched onto the canvas and held together by nails, a nod to Miyoko Ito’s work, the paintings convey instability and impermanence.
Dwyer stresses that the “call is coming from inside the house” with the last triptych. He has woven David Wojnarowicz’s The Burning House from 1982, a passionate protest against the oppression and marginalization experienced by those affected by the 1980s AIDS epidemic due to the mismanagement and lack of action of the government. While the iconic reference is abstracted across three panels, coupled with Dwyer’s dyeing technique, where a deep rust at the bottom edge spreads into sepia-toned wash, the incendiary imagery and ethos are hard to miss.
However intricately layered with references to literature, theory, activism, and art history, Dwyer's work is, you will feel it first and understand it later. For him, “abstraction is a tool of feeling intended to challenge the patriarchal supremacy of intellectual knowledge over visceral knowledge.” In the end, what prompts action? Is it feeling? Is it thought? Dwyer argues it’s both, together. With a web of threads laden with anxiety about the state of the world, Dwyer dares us to become a mobilizing force.
—Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy
Ricki Dwyer is an artist from the San Francisco Bay Area, currently working in Brooklyn. His practice considers the intersections of material, industry, and the somatic. His work acknowledges drapery as the negotiation that things never fall the same way twice. Dwyer has shown extensively throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. In 2022, he had solo exhibitions with Anglim/Trimble in San Francisco, Rupert in Lithuania and participated in the Biennale de Lyon in collaboration with Nicki Green. His most recent text, Decennial, on weaving as a metaphor for mutual aid was published with The Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art. He has been artist in residence with Recology, Jupiter Woods Gallery in London, The Textile Arts Center in New York, ARTHAUS Havana, and most recently in the foundry of Kohler Co, in Wisconsin. Dwyer is currently a Bronx Museum AIM Fellow and teaches with Parsons School of Design. He received his undergraduate degree in Fibers from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA from UC Berkeley.
