Pattern Pending

Gildar Gallery’s Adam Gildar has been a fan of Colorado painter Clark Richert for a long time: Richert is a fascinating artist with a fascinating history that includes a stint at the Drop City commune near Trinidad in the late 1960s, where his interest in the theories of Buckminster Fuller played out in the formation of geodesic domes and, eventually, in the direction of his painting style, an ever-growing dialectic informed by geometrics somehow coming together in space on a flat surface.

Part of what interests Gildar so much about Richert’s painting is the high level of science and mathematical calculation the artist pours into each work. “He talks about how his paintings are quick to execute but long in conception,” Gildar says, noting that the brainy theory behind it is a bit like a physics professor’s unintelligible scrawl on a blackboard: making perfect sense and, at the same time, not making sense. “It’s pattern-like in that there are shapes that appear over and over in his paintings, but the pattern itself doesn’t repeat,” Gildar adds.

When the opportunity arose for Gildar to show Richert’s work at his gallery after fellow gallerist Robin Rule, who represents the artist, closed her place in RiNo, he jumped on it. Clark Richert: Symmetry and Dimension opens tonight at Gildar Gallery, 82 South Broadway, with a reception from 6 to 10 p.m. Part new work and part conceptual works depicting the artistic communities, like Drop City, that were and are Richert’s inspiration, the show is an opportunity, Gildar hopes, for viewers both familiar with and not familiar with Richert’s challenging canvases to see his work in a new light. Symmetry and Dimension runs through mid-January; go to gildargallery.com or the Facebook event page, or call 303-993-4474 for information.
Thu., Nov. 14, 6-10 p.m.; Wednesdays-Saturdays. Starts: Nov. 14. Continues through Jan. 18, 2013