Apr 2004 - Feb 2005
Building 4, First Floor

Proposition Player, the first major museum exhibition of Matthew Ritchie's work was organized by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The MASS MoCA exhibition included enormous new pieces dramatically suited to MASS MoCA's soaring Tall Gallery on the first floor as well as a selection of paintings, drawings, and light boxes, which Ritchie is well-known for. His complex and imaginary story of the history of the universe is told through monumental wall drawings, expansive sculptural installations, and beautiful digital animations. He explores a self-created cosmological system through his work; an endless and complex landscape where various ideas and concepts can coexist, drawing upon a vocabulary of scientific notations, cartoon characters, mythology, biblical tales and pulp fiction to illustrate the workings of his alternate universe. At the core of Ritchie's art is "information," a sort of raw material from which all of his work evolves, as it is mapped and diagrammed through his own systems of color, line, paint, metal and light. Through his sweeping and incredibly detailed creations, viewers are engaged in his metaphorical search to determine man's place in the cosmos.

Matthew Ritchie, The Eighth Sea, (2002)