Clark Richert in Hyperspace

Published on the occasion of a major retrospective exhibition at MCA Denver, Clark Richert in Hyperspace celebrates the singular work of Denver-based abstract painter Clark Richert (born 1941). The book, like the exhibition, chronicles the distinct phases of Richert’s nearly 50-year career, tracing out the metaphysical thread that connects them and continues to drive Richert’s practice. That thread—the exploration and visualization of n-dimensionality, or hyperspace—not only elucidates Richert’s often enigmatic paintings but also links his oeuvre to the work of early 20th-century avant-gardists whose engagement with hyperspace philosophy was a pivotal modernist project (Braque, Duchamp, Ernst, Malevich, Mondrian, Van Doesburg and, later, Buckminster Fuller). For Richert the visual manifestation of dimensions beyond the three with which we are familiar is not solely a geometrical or philosophical problem, but the pursuit of an idealistic, even utopic, reality. For Richert, art is the tool by which this project can be realized.