Elizabeth Rooklidge on Victoria Fu and Matt Rich

Installation in Monster A. exhibition, 2019, Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA. Photo: Michael Underwood

[Image description: Two pieces of fabric, with loops at the top and strings on the sides, hang on a multicolored background affixed to a white wall. The colorful fabric pieces resemble aprons, but the one on the left has a triangular top and the one on the right has two bulbous forms at its bottom. On the floor, a low white and pink pedestal stands against the wall.]

When I consider Victoria Fu and Matt Rich’s collaborative work, I find my mind searching for precedents, names of famous artist duos from a history that venerates the individual. Scanning my mental archive, I think of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Ed and Nancy Kienholz. Marina Abramovic and Ulay. Bernd and Hilla Becher. All these pairs are (or were) partners not only in art, but also in life, and their combined efforts produced groundbreaking, enduring artwork that profoundly shaped the contemporary field.

It is notable that for many of these duos, one individual is remembered as a fixture of art stardom, while the second is cast as the “helper,” without their own distinctive vision. Other pairs are spoken of as a single being, one never without the other. This evidences the way in which art history has created an extreme binary to frame artmaking between partners. Matt Rich and Victoria Fu, also partners in life and art, break this framework, having successfully developed distinct practices and simultaneously creating fruitful work together.

Victoria Fu, Télévoix 1, 2017, 5 min. excerpt from 7 min. video with sound

[Video description: The grainy color video alternates among scenes that appear to be taking place on a computer screen. A cursor navigates open image windows and lists of files; a light-skinned hand repeatedly swipes, as if using a touch screen; a person with white skin and a white shirt turns as if being being directed; a zebra and monarch butterfly move across a field of abstract colors; confetti falls; cereal and milk pour into a glass bowl; and light-skinned hands clap and rub together. These moments are interspersed with a views of a gallery installation, with a hanging curtain darkening the room and a video monitor on the back wall.]

Fu identifies as a moving image artist, though that designation belies her work’s multifaceted nature. With film, video, photography, installation, and sculpture, she investigates what it is to be human, in a body, in an overwhelmingly digitized age. Fu appropriates stock footage from various media sources, as well as pedestrian screensavers and cursor icons. Sometimes she shoots her own images. She combines these real-life pictures with digitally generated, lusciously colored abstraction. All of it is heavily manipulated in the post-production process. The end result evokes what she has called the “glassy emptiness” of a world dominated by screens. [1]

Left: Matt Rich, Ampersand, 2020, acrylic and canvas on jute, 45 x 39 in. Right: Matt Rich, Backward Ampersand, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 45 x 43 in.

[Image description: An installation of two multicolored paintings side by side on a white wall. The one on the left is in the shape of a blocky ampersand, while the one on the right is the same shape, but reversed.]

Rich, meanwhile, is a painter. Thoroughly and devotedly. His color, the most immediate register in which the works operate, might best be described as active. He manages to combine, for example, blazing orange, jet black, sickly green, dusky purple, juicy red, and plain mud into a single composition, where they come alive through their play off each other. Rich crafts a substrate for these colors not from a single sheet of paper, but from smaller pieces he has painted individually, which he attaches to to each other to create large, irregularly shaped paintings. The combination of color and form creates an engaging effect of spatial illusion, buoying the viewer in a heady swirl of flatness and depth. Of particular relevance to this essay are Rich’s works in the shape of an ampersand, the visual sign for and. The ampersand finds its etymological origin in the ligature of the letters e and t: et being the Latin for and. The term ligature is used in typography to describe the joining of two letters into a single glyph. Under Rich’s hand, materials, shapes, and colors join as letters and words do, creating a similar syntactical spark. In the fusion of elements, his paintings suggest, the work becomes fully activated.

Left: Glare (Stella's), 2017, dye-printed fabric, 53 x 30 in. Right: Queen Peekabo, 2017, dye-printed fabric, 72 x 27 in. Photos: Michael Underwood

[Image descriptions: Left: A standard apron shape pinned flat to a white wall. The form is made up of different patches of bright colors, many layered over each other. A white ring is in the apron’s bottom left corner. Right: A long, irregularly shaped apron pinned flat to a white wall. The apron has two distinct sections. The upper one is in bright colors, while the bottom one is light pink with holes in it.]

Rich and Fu’s joint practice originated in 2013, while sharing a studio space during an artist residency; by happenstance, one of Fu’s projections fell upon Rich’s painting while working. Their shared interests— in color, form, and the viewer’s physical experience— came into focus. The possibility for collaboration simmered. They acted on it when they received an invitation to do a show in 2017 at The Suburban (a Milwaukee exhibition space founded by another artist couple, Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam). Those first works took a shape that would remain at the center of their ongoing collaboration: the apron. That humble piece of material, with its looping neck and dangling ties, is essential to so many industries but carries the inescapable symbolism of domesticity. We see a standard apron form in Glare (Stella’s), one of the first works from 2017, that bears an amalgamation of Fu’s digitized color fields and Rich’s swift brushstrokes, cut and layered so that any distinction dissolves. From there, the aprons morph, taking impractical shapes and sporting illogical holes. While the aprons still appear wearable— indeed, visitors are invited to put some of them on— they move slyly from domestic utility into a fantastical realm.

Rainbow, 2018, dye-printed fabric, 47 x 27 in., installation in Monster A., 2019, Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA. Photo: Michael Underwood

[Image description: An apron pinned to a wall against an organically shaped background. The background looks like a photo of crumpled white fabric with a gridded pattern on it. The apron has three distinct sections: the top is purple, the middle is yellow with shards of color, and the bottom is burgundy with shapes in prismatic colors on it.]

The artists explain their working method by likening it to their domestic one. When cooking at home, they decide together what they’ll make, swapping suggestions and then dividing labor. Rich uses tools, applies heat, cooks meat. Fu combines elements, often mixing ingredients to make salad. [2] It all adds up to a gratifying meal (I’ve eaten at their house and can testify that their cooking is excellent). They say this method applies in the studio, as well. When making the aprons, they brainstorm jointly, which is the process’s messiest phase; they mostly agree but frequently compromise. From there, they pass the work between their studios, conveniently next to each other on the University of San Diego campus. Fu and Rich shuttle a piece back and forth anywhere from five to twenty times. It’s a fast exchange, which they believe is largely responsible for the work’s freshness.

Monster A., 2019, installation view, Orange County Museum of Art. Photo: Michael Underwood

[Image description: Three of Fu and Rich’s aprons, placed closely together, hang loosely from hooks on a white wall.]

In a collaborative text for an exhibition at the Miller Institute of Contemporary Art, they describe their practice in evocative language: 

“We conjoin emotions, limbs, antagonisms, attention spans and skills. Our togetherness weaves in and out like iffy radio signals, taking turns and passing the baton, the buck. In order to make this work, we stay different by staying ourselves. It gets muddled if we step into each other, like a horse with five legs. The map is clear. He cuts this, she touches that. Here's what I did. Do you like it? Here, do your thing.” [3]

Fu and Rich make it sound easy and, apparently, for them it is. They tell me their collaborative artistic process is smoother, they disagree less, than in “regular” life. [4] They acknowledge what each does best and respect when it’s the other’s turn to make a decision. They are proud that when the apron is in its final state, the viewer cannot distinguish which artist is responsible for which component of the work. Independent labor blends seamlessly into shared authorship, while they continue to make distinctive work in their own individual practices. 

Monster A., 2018, installation view, University Hall Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA. Photo: Stewart Clements

[Image descriptions: Four of Fu and Rich’s aprons pinned flat in a row on a white wall. The two on the right are connected by their strings.]

All partnerships require reciprocity and openness to change, while balancing these efforts with one's integrity as an individual. There is a continuous flux of negotiation as new challenges arise— some of an inevitable nature and some of our own creation. There are so many opportunities for it to go awry, but when it goes right— whether in small moments or over the arc of life— the process is one of vulnerability. It is the acceptance of vulnerability in the last three sentences of Fu and Rich’s text that stand out to me: “Here’s what I did. Do you like it? Here, do your thing.” The act of joining requires us to lay bare what we did, what we are, with sincerity.

Elizabeth Rooklidge is an independent curator and Editor of HereIn.

Notes

1. Anna Wallace-Thompson, "Frieze LA Special: In conversation with artist Victoria Fu," Lux, 2019.

2. Julia Sherman, "Getty Garden Salad: Victoria Fu," Getty Iris Blog, 2015

3. Victoria Fu and Matt Rich, The Portal Is The Place, Miller ICA: Pittsburgh, 2021.

4. Conversation with the author, February 17, 2021.