Giulia Ricci

She works with materials to produce fine geometric abstractions using a variety of hand and digital processes and a variety of materials (mainly paper and ink but also leather, wood, vinyl and paint); her work is interested in the tactile quality of geometric patterns; hand drawing is therefore a very important part of her practice and of course my work will also have a significant hand drawing component.

Her work is interested in the relationship between decoration and abstraction, and my practice references textiles, tiles, bricks and various other artefacts related to the domestic sphere, architecture and the built environment. The seemingly abstract nature of the work is therefore only partially so, as the patterns I use are associated with physical objects.

The basic structure of her work consists of a grid of isosceles right-angled triangles. Her uses repetition, rotation, mirroring and other typical methods of combining ornaments to arrange, modify and distort their configuration. In recent works these triangles have become increasingly distorted and organic, but the structure that underpins the painting is always the grid. The relationship to the surrounding space is very important, although in my own work I tend to be flat and focus on surfaces. But it is interesting to create multiple focal points in her work and I use this strategy to elicit a tactile and spatial response from the viewer. Proportion and perspective play an important role in this regard, and the perception of my work changes significantly depending on the distance of the viewer and their angle to the surface; these factors are organised around the relationship between the macro forms of the main structure of the work and the micro patterns and their distortions.