Matthew Ritchie at Andrea Rosen

"Their appearance and their work was as if a wheel within a wheel; as for their rings, they were so high they were dreadful and their rings were full of eyes, round about them four." So begins the Old Testament verse from Ezekiel I that was quoted on a lightbox outside the gallery, priming viewers for Matthew Ritchie's arcane and epic multimedia installation within. Ezekiers famous vision of a "wheel in the sky" carrying four beasts with four heads--lion, ox, eagle, man--technologized the ineffable, couching a sublime omen in the mechanical terms of the day. Like Ezekiel, and along with guiding lights Matthew Barney and Robert Smithson, Ritchie proposes an elaborate cosmology in which phantasmagoric worlds are rooted in the contemporary.

Ritchie's exhibition was titled "The Universal Adversary," which, as revealed by the Department of Homeland Security Web site, is also the name of the hypothetical antagonist in a training exercise "that replicates actual terrorist networks in extreme detail." The prime mover in Ritchie's scenario is never specified, and likewise, the devastation it wreaks could be human, environmental or geopolitical.

Upon entering "The Universal Adversary," visitors were greeted by a computer-animated landscape projected across two adjoining walls. Either extraterrestrial or post-apocalyptic, this terrain consisted of black, earth-toned and gold painterly marks and torrents of linear fragments. The animation was interactive, fed by motion sensors, and grew more frenzied as the vestibule became more crowded. It was accompanied by a digital sound track mixing narration and various audio effects that similarly became louder and more urgent as the audience density increased.

In the main gallery, a scorched-earth realm inhabited by wandering, bereft figures was painted on a gridded wall of back-lit acrylic panels. Lenticular striations on the panels' surfaces caused the images to shift slightly when seen from different angles, an update of the time-honored use of anamorphic illusions in painting. On other walls were large paintings of abstract explosions and tenuous networks in green, gold and earth tones. An enormous openwork metal structure was suspended from the ceiling, filling the space overhead with an organic, layered lattice that also projected downward, slicing through sight lines. Viewers could climb a spiral staircase and survey the gallery from above while watching another animation, located in the oculus of the metal lattice, of ships moving across a sulphurous bog.

"The Universal Adversary" is a spectacular project, but is this because what Ritchie has to say demands this form? Ritchie is fond of grand gestures; their significance is far from clear.

COPYRIGHT 2007 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning