In the exhibition Richard Allen Morris «Multiple Identities» Häusler Contemporary presents the «Guns» series from 1965. An exclusive assortment of works on paper and canvas showcases this American artist’s painterly originality and subversive touch, which are admired by his fellow artists but are largely undiscovered by the general public.
Since the 1960s, Richard Allen Morris (*1933) has explored various media in painting, pushing the image to the threshold of object and relief and alternating wittily and ironically between figuration and abstraction. Described as a painter’s painter, Morris has worked in obscurity for decades. Only a few contemporaries have been afforded a glimpse of the artist’s oeuvre, which helps to explain why renown has come so late in his career.«The usual suspects» are how Richard Allen Morris refers to the motifs that emerged in his many years of artistic exploration of the theme of «Guns». Following extensive serial works on paper, which are the focus of our exhibition, Morris addressed this theme repeatedly from the mid-1960s to the 1980s; in addition to paintings on canvas, he created surreal-looking objects, often as collages made from colour-stained wood and other found materials.
In our «Multiple Identities» exhibition, we present an exclusive selection from the artist’s series on paper and works on canvas. Created from 1965 onwards, they share a close temporal and thematic connection to works by Pop Artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine and Andy Warhol. Unlike these members of the New York art scene, however, Morris experiments with a sensually charged style of painting that remains committed to Abstract Expressionism.