Who Cares if We Get Caught, etching, spraypaint aquatint, drypoint

Attached Observer
– Philippe Ricard –

July 3 -July 27, 2025
Opening/Vernissage: July 5, 2-5:00 pm

Through the lens of drawing, I seek to explore, document, and affectionately satirize the every-day complexity and underappreciated absurdity of the urban environment that surrounds me. Set in my adoptive city of Baltimore, Maryland, my work is on the one hand informed by drawings of real places and memories of personal experiences, and on the other hand exaggerated, chaotic, staged. This core contrast emphasizes my subjectivity as an observer, and acts as a starting point from which I explore the city as a site of contradictions: between beauty and debauchery, romance and anxiety, community and alienation.

The exploration of these contrasts, this need to root myself in a city so removed from my comfortable, suburban California upbringing, developed hand-in-hand with my idiosyncratic approach to printmaking. I combine disparate image sources— sketches, photographs, in situ marks and references to old master prints— with the varied drawing techniques and textural effects made possible by etching and monotype. Printmaking has a transformative effect in my practice, merging these myriad sources and techniques while retaining the material traces of every layer. Through this process, I strive to represent my surroundings as a site of wondrous complexity, worthy of both celebration and critique.

Philippe Ricard

Philippe Ricard graduated with a BFA in Printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he also worked as a print technician in the Risograph lab. In 2023, Ricard interned at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, Maryland, and as winner of the Washington Print Foundation's 2024 National Small Works Competition, this will be his second solo exhibition. Now living and working in Baltimore, Ricard has made the city the focus of his work, taking inspiration from daily routine, exploratory walks, and the sketches and photos he makes along the way to stage dramatized scenes of urban life.

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