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Richard Stone - Mono & The Day Will Come,
Antique oil on board, antique parian porcelain, wax |
Appropriating found paintings and sculptures Richard Stone reclaims potentially kitsch artifacts and reworks them through simple processes of abstraction. The classical reference points of the figure and landscape are intangibly out of reach as Stone's investment in these objects has submerged their otherwise tawdry relations with a sense of absence and metamorphosis.
Either by adding wax to porcelain figures or removing paint from antique oil paintings, Stone's emphasis seems to be on solitude and enforced amnesia. Overlooked generic landscapes of past years and ideals are abstracted to a point of sublime like contemplation, and the proposed heroism of mass produced classical figurines is annulled. Neither destructive nor iconoclastic Stone's work offers up somber poetic entry points to these past monuments of taste.
