I’m in a bit of an awkward position here as Richard is a recent acquaintance of mine and i know he is of the belief that the less said about an artist the better, or perhaps he is refering solely to himself, i’m not really sure, but there you have it a disclosure of sorts.

I do feel however that the story of how we met may provide a few clues to understanding Bicir. You see, a few months ago i was searching for a hard-to-find CD by the Icelandic composer Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, Children of Nature to be exact, which i fortunately discovered on Amazon’s marketplace. In the process of making the order i mentioned i was looking for a few other things and i received a rather pleasant reply from Richard suggesting various other titles in the same genre and gentle encouragement to check out the reviews on his website. From there a conversation developed which lead to our meeting over a beer one day. It turns out that among his many talents Richard is a rather astute music critic, which you can see by visiting his website Incursion.org yourself. And it is that refined ear, that ability to listen deeply, especially to often near silent electro-acoustic compositions, that is reflected in Bicir.

Bicir displays an attention, you might even describe it as “an intended gaze,” he is not satisfied with merely looking, but is intent upon truly seeing. His gaze is groping out into the world, extending his own seemingly limited self. And it is in this process of questionning that i can’t help but feel that not only Bicir, but Richard himself begins to question his own reliance on words. There is a point, implied, though not subtley, where it dawns on Bicir that the intellect has usurped the throne, and in that moment he sees that the emperor has no clothes. I don’t know if Richard is at all familiar with the Tao Teh Ching but in it Lao Tzu wrote, “If it was not laughed at it would not be the Tao.” But, whatever the case, Bicir bursts out laughing.

So there is one possible reading. Richard may be shocked when he reads it, for i have no idea what his own intentions were with the piece. However this is a reading which has common threads extending throughout many, if not all, of the pieces in this exhibition: an acute analysis of perception and how we read the world and our place within it.

But there are other aspects that should be addressed as well, especially those of form. For here we are, presenting an exhibition of art in a new media and yet with such rather flexible technology at his fingertips, Richard creates little more than an electronic chapbook, to the point of simulating the layout of a book opened before you. Now it just so happens that just the other day Amazon, in an obvious nod to iTunes, began selling short stories for the reasonable price of 49cents a download. Apparently you can read them online or store them to be read on your own computer, but i suspect most people will simply print them out and read them from the familiar page. I’m not sure about those who have been raised with computers, but i and most people i know, are yet to find the experience of reading from a monitor nearly as satisfying as the feel and smell of decently made book. So perhaps Richard is on to something here by building a comfortable bridge between the printed and digital text.

William S. Burroughs’ mentor Brion Gyosin believed that writers were lagging 50 years behind painters, but that was back in the fifties. These days i think they are falling ever quicker behind, especially considering the staggering pace maintained by the possibilities and discoveries, if not the very dialogue that artists are now engaged in. Even poetry, that bastion of experimentation and contrarity, seems to be withering in face of where things are headed. But again i wonder whether Richard is unaware of the choices he has made or is instead making the difficult, and among a certain milieu i suspect unpopular, choice of using the latest software and technology while rooting himself in a classical tradition? I myself remain undecided for i find that i am somewhat charmed by this little text and the delicate shade of its accompanying images, and yet i can’t help but wonder about how much further such realisations as those of Bicir might be carried.

Michael Tweed