The Good People of SUNDAY are pleased to announce Black Sunday, a solo show featuring the artwork of Daniel Rich. Using photographs found in newspapers and magazines as source material, Rich’s enamel on wood paintings achieve a graphic, hard-edged surface that questions the impact of historical and political events on social spaces and built environments.

Nurtured by his affection for graffiti and skateboarding, images of highly charged empty spaces permeate Rich’s work. After an elaborate, labor-intensive process of color mixing and masking, the images are then translated into bold paintings depicting scenes such as: the Miami airport, government buildings in Iraq, a mosque spared by the 2005 tsunami, and Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections. In each instance, the individual participants are edited from the image, leaving the viewer with the impression that a critical event occurred just moments ago.

While Rich attempts to stay as true to the original photograph as possible, removing the human component allows the artist to heighten the significance of the captured moment. In this regard, the paintings provide the viewer with an opportunity to reconsider the physical effects of violence and destruction in distant places that may have initially been overlooked in the original photograph.

Daniel Rich (b. 1977, Ulm, Germany) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art; and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Later this spring, a large-scale work will be featured in his second exhibition with Mario Diacono in Boston, MA. Black Sunday is the artist’s first New York solo exhibition.

Project Space: Michael Jones McKean