WHAT IS FLAT / WHAT IS SPACE?

1989

Artists Space
New York, New York 

“…Reich masks elaborate geometries with perforated screens of color that tease the eye…a vibrant visuality….”  

Roberta Smith in the New York Times, May 5, 1989

 “…At each point that his work changed, it was because a new set of questions had occurred to him that he was probing himself.  He wanted to have people perceive what those questions were…He never lost sight of the surface of the canvas and never lost sight of the games he was playing …”  

From a 2013 interview with art historian Irene Winter in “Remembering Murray Reich”

 “…(The paintings) don’t use illusionism for its own sake, but only to heighten the viewer’s consciousness of the inherently mental nature of perception, the abstract, indwelling, cognitive enigma of even the most plastic array of colors and lines…What the exploration of this perceptual mystery does is allow Reich the freedom to arrive at unexpected images at once compelling in their logic, and intuitive in their guesswork and sense of play…” 

From “The Dotted Eye: Sensation and Sensibility in Murray Reich’s Painting”  catalog essay by Elizabeth Frank