Ricci Albenda

Interior Landscape, Full Spectrum (2009)

Ricci Albenda’s Interior Landscape, Full Spectrum (2009) takes visitors in two directions: back in time to pre-Renaissance Europe, where painting and architecture were intimately related, and into the future, where painting and architecture are again integrated, but this time in the virtual world of digital information. Albenda’s visually tricky installation plays up the confusion between two-dimensional illusions and three-dimensional space to make visitors aware of our surroundings and alert us to art’s power to change them.

The New York artist begins with the architecture on which his 130-foot-long painting, or series of oddly shaped paintings, rests: the gently curved wall that wraps around the field and follows the graceful oval shape of the stadium. Albenda breaks the smooth continuity of the wall into a fractured funhouse of color, affixing nearly two dozen aluminum panels to it. Each panel has four sides but none are square, or even rectangular. No two are the same shape, nor does a right angle appear to define any of their corners, which tend toward extremes. As for their colors, no two are the same. Although they cover the spectrum, Albenda has replaced the natural violet, red, and yellow of the rainbow with such tints as lavender, coral, and ochre.

Arranged side-by-side in an eccentric row, Albenda’s beautifully painted panels appear to recede and protrude as if pulsating like a peculiar, geometric heartbeat. The two-dimensional space of painting and the three-dimensional space of architecture are no longer separate as they come together to trick the eye and delight the mind.