“Out of all the possibilities that exist – including not existing – how strange it is to be anything at all.” – Lisa Beck

Stephanie Theodore is very pleased to present Two: Lisa Beck / Philippe Richard, an exhibition of the conflation of work by New York-based Lisa Beck and Paris-based Philippe Richard. Each artist approaches the practice of painting wishing to expand limits, definitions and rules, utilizing different means to push paint off the canvas and away from the hegemony of singularity.

Lisa Beck’s work seems to spring from the grey areas between chaos and order – and the coalescent patterns and forms that we recognize as the meeting place between one extreme and the other. Beck’s artworks are manifestations of long investigation of perception and subjectivity, presenting the patterns depicted therein and patterns inherent in the creative process. The pieces seen in this exhibition make use of mirrored surfaces that opens up endless potentiality – the viewer is not just looking at the work, but becomes a part of it, for that moment. The work manifests variations of appearance and reception for a viewer, whose passive role as a visual ‘consumer’ is replaced with certain acknowledgement of his/her presence.

Lisa graduated from Rhode Island School of Design. Since that time, she has had many solo and group exhibits in the US and across Europe. Lisa’s work has been reviewed in ARTnews, Artforum, Frieze, the New York Times, and other publications. Lisa Beck is represented by Feature Inc., New York.

Philippe Richard finds elasticity in the concept and physical sense of the picture plane. His paintings borrow patterns, colors, movements from each other, often manifesting in three-dimensional forms or components that appear to defy the accepted definition of the picture plane. Richard employs visceral aspects of sculpture to challenge the limits of what painting can be, bringing into focus the perceptual and formal elements of the actual experience of painting.

Philippe Richard has exhibited widely in Europe. In New York, he has been included in group shows at Cheim & Read Gallery and Lennon Weinberg. In 2006, he presented his first solo show in the United States at the Laumeier Sculpture Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, where he has built a large installation in their park. He is represented in Europe by Galerie Bernard Jordan, Paris and Zurich.