Since
the 1970’s Richard Sloat has been making prints that capture
the density, excitement and heightened reality of New York City, or
a city very similar to New York. In his layered cityscapes Sloat brings
a “clarity to the phantasmagoria of viewing the world and brings
us to its visual essence, which is so satisfying, the world seen afresh.” Some
prints are transformations and intensifications of scenes we recognize
- others are abstractions of from which the city lies only just below
the surface. But always, as critics have noted, the energy of the city
pulses through.
The New York Times spoke of Sloat’s prizewinning etching “Bridges,
Boats, Brooklyn,” which will be on view, as using “light and
movement to weave together the conflicting energies of New York City.” John
Goodrich in ArtCritical.com recently noted the “lush specificity
of atmosphere” in the more naturalistic prints whereas “Cubist
stylizations enter into other images” where “bridge ramps dotted
with bumper to bumper traffic and endless walls of windows become the streams
of energy tying these compositions together.” He noticed, too, an
ability to integrate into this dynamic sweep “zones of intimate activity.”
Richard Sloat studied with Rackstraw Downes at the University of Pennsylvania
and with Roberto Delmonica at the Art Students League. A winner of multiple
prizes, Sloat received the Leo Meisner Prize twice at the National Academy
of Design, of which he is now an elected member. Active also in bringing
artists together Sloat is currently president of the Society of American
Graphic Artists. His work has been widely exhibited and collected in New
York the United States and internationally, and he is included in the collections
of the British Museum, New York Historical Society, The Museum of the City
of New York, the Israel Museum and others. The show will run concurrently
with “Independence” an exhibit of the photographs by his son
Ben Sloat.
