For the last five years, James Rieck’s compositions have been inspired by and gleaned from commercial catalogs. Having delved through couture catalogs of the 1960’s, “How To Knit” catalogs of the 70’s, wedding catalogs and sexually heightened imagery from the Abercrombie and Fitch genre, James has now set his sights on the grandest of all sales catalogs – Annual Reports. This exhibition features several large-scale oil paintings (84” x 60”, 36” x 108” and 72” x 144”) that address the attitudes and pomposity of multi-national corporations by zeroing in on the body language projected by the CEO, CFO, et al., that are typically featured in these ultimate sales tools.

Through amplified scale and deliberate cropping, James Rieck re-contextualizes the familiar compositions inherent to the lexicon of commercial photography. By focusing on the archetypal nature of the subjects, James has delivered a body of work that draws attention to the staging and psychological aspects behind the posturing of the source material.

James Rieck is currently a faculty member at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. He earned both his MFA and his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Glasgow School of Art. In 2006, James received the prestigious Trawick Prize. He lives and works in Baltimore, MD. and has been represented by Lyons Wier Ortt Gallery since 2003. A catalog of the exhibition will be available in the gallery with contributing text from Dominique Nahas.