Daniel Rich presents a new body of paintings in his exhibition Magic Mountain, examining themes of political power, memory, and history through nocturnal scenes of New York City. Towering buildings in rich colors of sapphire blue, amethyst purple, and tangerine fill Rich’s cityscapes with anticipation, silence, and a subtle tension suggested by an unseen activity or emptiness within.

Drawing on literary themes, he considers New York as a place of reinvention while also exploring the city’s sense of isolation from the world beyond it. This is the first series Rich has made from his own photography, a nod to the artist’s authentic experience of the city he views as “something closer to a portal than to a place.”

Rich refers to these cityscapes as “edited” versions of the real world. In the catalogue essay by Evan Pricco, “What Happens on the Twenty-Third Floor: On the New Paintings of Daniel Rich,” Rich explains “The buildings are real. The version of them on the panel is not quite the world as it is, but the world as it has been strained through one very particular, very deliberate set of decisions, over and over, thousands of times, until a painting exists.”

Daniel Rich (b. 1977 in Ulm, Germany) received his Master of Fine Arts in 2004 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University in Boston, MA, and has completed a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, ME. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2001 from the Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA.

Rich has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt, Germany; Mario Diacono Gallery, Boston, MA; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA; and the Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY, among others.

His work has been featured in institutional group exhibitions at the Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; The Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA; Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta, GA; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA; North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem, Winston-Salem, NC; Rollins Museum of Art, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL; The Skowhegan Alliance, New York, NY; Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY, and elsewhere.

Rich’s work may be found in the collections of the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum, Blowing Rock, NC; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Fidelity Art Collection, Boston, MA; Hudson Valley MOCA, Peekskill, NY; JPMorganChase Art Collection, New York, NY; The Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA; Rollins Museum of Art, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL; and Wellington Management, Boston, MA, among others.

The artist lives and works in Blowing Rock, NC and Berlin, Germany.