Richard Phillips on intimacy and fame

Oskar Weiss and Oliver Falk are presenting 'Drawing', an exhibition of recent work by Richard Phillips, at their Basel gallery, Weiss Falk.

It consist of eight large scale charcoal and chalk portrait drawings, that share a seductive quality with their source imagery which ranges from Seventies Men's Magazines to contemporary Instagram. “Throwaway images” as the artist sometimes calls them. Material that has the “sensual and psychological presence of something that is not being regarded as an image that you look at with a focus”.

ARTWORKS Drawing exhibition at Weiss Falk, Basel

From the outside, I interpret your work as being a rather intimate project. What is/are your definition(s) of intimacy?

I agree that these new drawings involve an increased level of intimacy both for me as the one who is creating the work but also for the viewer looking at them. To this end I changed the method of my drawing in order to increase the sensitivity of how I applied the charcoal and chalk to the surface of the paper and how the paper received it. Specifically I began using a traditional preparation of the paper with technical gelatin and dry pigment. The application of this mixture to a heavy weight paper creates a very fine grit to the surface that allows for the widest range of mark making. The choice of close portraiture inspired by images from instagram and erotic magazines from the seventies also placed the viewer in close visual proximity to the drawn subjects. Among the images there is a variety of intentions being described through drawing. The images from the seventies were professionally created to inspire desire and eroticism through a glance or an offhand moment for commercial objectives. I began my process by cropping in on the original layout image and selecting shots that may have made it through the editing process to reveal an unintended psychological moments. This new image became the starting point for the investigation of this state of mind through an intensive drawing effort that aimed to go past photographic representation to another heightened state of communication.

Similarly with the Instagram imagery a comparative commercial self promotion objective is evident in the images I chose. Alluring beauty and seductive expressions are employed to enhance brand associations and commercial partnerships.

Evolving from the erotic imagery from the seventies this new form of intimate communication operates within defined social guidelines and censorship regulations to deliver a safe intimate experience that conditions both the producer and viewer to live within an algorithmic consumption loop. I chose the physical act of drawing to break through this illusion of intimate realism by allowing touch feeling and sensitivity to be absorbed into the surface where it can be held. No haptic clicks or flashes of light but strokes of the charcoal pencil and blending of chalk combining to affirm our passion for looking and observing in real life.

Do you think about a time where nobody gave/will give a damn that you are producing work or that you are you?

I don't think about that time.

What is your relationship to freedom?

Within the context of making these recent drawings I found unexpected freedom in the later stages of each drawing when I would pass through the difficult and often unattractive phases where the work did not show much evidence that it could develop into what I'd hoped for. This passage was a freedom from intentionality that occurred by letting the discipline of the process take me out to the other side of my own accumulated experience. This is a personal freedom within my practice of making art that is reached through the endurance of staying with a creative effort far beyond reason.

The objective is not to mimic the realism of description but to reach a realism of an emotional and psychological state of being.

Are you interested in your model’s fame?

With my new drawings I am working with the specificity of each image as a reference or a starting point for investigation rather than them being a recording of the endpoint of fame and notoriety. In the past my artwork has positioned the infrastructure of celebrity and fame as its conceptual basis but with these drawing I've let that go. Some of the subjects do have a large following for their work as models but the drawings are not aiming to engage or comment on those metrics.

What about their enjoyment (or resentment) to be viewed?

This is a certainly question for the individuals who's images I referred to for my drawings. I cannot speak for them.
What I will say is that the drawing Anna I was invited by Ezra Petronio to create a cover for the new issue of Self Service magazine. Ezra staged a photo shoot in Paris with the model Anna Ewers after which I was sent images to work from. I then created a digital collage from two images that placed Anna in a composition with herself. From this composite I created the drawing and painting. All along Anna was collaborating with Ezra and I and was part of the process. When I submitted the final images to the magazine Anna was shown my artworks and responded very positively. Alena Blohm and Kim Riekenberg were not involved in the work process in the same way because I used existing imagery as inspiration. However both were aware that I was working on drawings and both responded positively as well.

Tell me about what you’re looking at, at the moment, and the effect that it has on you.

Concurrent with our drawing exhibition Oskar invited me to create an art car with Porsche for their all new electric car the Taycan 4S.
This followed another project I did with Porsche works driver Jörg Bergmeister for the 911RSR race car he raced and won with at Le Mans in 2019. With the Taycan project I've had the chance to see how my painting 'Queen of the Night' from 2010 could be taken apart two dimensionally and transformed into a wholly new image applied to the bodywork of a vehicle designed with sustainability and environment in mind. My 10 foot square painting was an appropriation of Swiss New Objectivity painter Adolf Dietrich's small painting of a night blooming cactus in the landscape. Signal Design in Germany printed out a further enlarged vinyl of a design I made with my painting and hand applied the art so as to flow across the contours of the car. The car was then taken to the alps and into the center of Zurich to be photographed. I was stunned by the imagery Porsche's photographer created. It was fascinating to see the full manifestation of the project in yet another visual art progression. I'm glad the project will benefit artists and freelancers in Switzerland affected by the pandemic.

How does one navigate that space, of being at the centre of one’s work but not making it about oneself? Do you?

I make my work entirely myself. There are no assistants drawing or painting on my works. I am at the center of my work in that it doesn't happen with out me 100% taking it through all its phases.

Though these new drawings are not direct self portraits there is an aspect to the work that does create a more subtle portrait of myself.

It could be in the result of the sustained effort to use drawing as a means of expression and communication. Taking drawing beyond a sketch or a cast off gesture and insisting on its autonomy takes the drawing back from the depicted and places the focus on the one who took it there in the first place.

Describe how you got to work with the Weiss Falk duo in Basel. How did the relationship come about?

I met Oskar Weiss at an exhibition his friend and colleague Arthur Fink had curated in Zurich that included drawings of mine. Soon after I visited their Hacienda gallery and was very impressed by the work that was being shown there and the energy that was clearly building around what they were doing. Oskar and I spoke of doing an exhibition together while at Hacienda looking outside at black and white diagonally striped window shutters. Our conversation continued after the new gallery opened in Basel. At that point Oli joined in the discussions and we all agreed we should keep in touch and schedule a show. After often meeting Oskar during his trips to NY only to have him mercilessly beat me at pool we fast forward to 2020 when he invited me to show my Lindsay Lohan and Sasha Grey films on his Kino Süd artist video platform. I was delighted to participate and it wasn't too long after that Oskar contacted me about the possibility of working with Porsche on a new art car he was curating. During our discussions of the art car that was to be staged at the Leuenhof restaurant in Zurich Oskar and Oli proposed the idea of having a drawing exhibition at their newly renovated Weiss Falk gallery in Basel. I had coincidentally been working on new large scale drawings and agreed this would be an exciting idea. Eight works later we have the exhibition that is currently on view... Richard Phillips, Drawing.

Images Courtesy of Weiss Falk, Basel and the artist

Installation views Flavio Karrer

Drawings Tom Powel Images