Posturing in advertising not so different from history of painting

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

JAMES RIECK / DUST GALLERY

Painter James Rieck, who teaches at Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., chose to focus on the sleek bathing caps in a German fashion catalog advertising “Kurort” wear at mineral baths.

When looking at James Rieck’s paintings in “Cure Resort,” on display through Saturday at Dust Gallery in the SoHo Lofts, it’s not surprising to learn that the Maryland artist was a commercial muralist for 10 years or that he carried around a 1965 Sears catalog wherever he went in graduate school.

He’s a phenomenal photorealist painter who has taken the ideals portrayed in fashion catalogs, cropped them to show only the “perfect” product and presented them in grand proportions that grab and transfix the viewer, much like advertising. Rieck, who teaches at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., describes advertising as the “most powerful thing ever created.”

Rieck’s comparison of advertising and the history of painting, via similar posturing and “agendas,” is as intriguing as the visual awe experienced when confronted by his large-scale portraits of the “ubiquitous and benign”: slacks, bedding, curtains and Jackie O outfits.

In “Cure Resort,” the subject is vintage and contemporary bathing caps — beautiful, stylish and sleek. The caps are as perfect as the eyebrows of the model, which are all we see of the model because who really needs the human when we’re defined by the product or aspire to be everything the product promises?

This is not at all a tired assault on consumerism. The bathing caps in “Cure Resort” were taken from a German fashion catalog that advertised various “Kurort” wear at mineral baths, which are described in the gallery write-up as “an escape from the troubles of life” where one can be renewed. Kind of like the promise of advertising.