WESTPORT, CT .- An engaged audience gathered at the Museum of Contemporary Art \ Connecticut (MoCA\CT) last night for a Gallery Talk with artist Rick Shaefer, who offered insight into the inspirations, ideas, and techniques behind his practice and Colossi, his monumental charcoal drawings currently on view at MoCA\CT through November 15.
“I don’t want to explain away everything, and actually, I can’t explain everything, because there’s lots of these drawings that I don’t understand myself,” Shaefer told the audience. “But that’s the way it should be. That’s the way art should be.”
Shaefer spoke candidly about the many disparate influences embedded within his work, from Rembrandt and Hieronymus Bosch to John Ford and Star Wars. Included in the conversation was his interest in the sublime—the tension between awe and unease, beauty and peril—and the ways art can draw viewers into that space.
He also discussed his choice of charcoal and its remarkable ability to shift between abstraction and photographic realism. Recalling his experience studying Rembrandt’s etchings at Harvard with a magnifying glass, Shaefer described the thousands of marks within his own drawings: “Up close, these are all scribbles and marks, and then you pull back, and they become photographic and cinematic.”
The audience followed Shaefer through the gallery as he explored works from his Refugee Trilogy, including Border Crossing, a complex composition that engages with canonical masters in Western art, including Rubens, Gricault, Picasso, and Goya.
In her introduction, MoCA\CT Executive Director Robin Jaffee Frank highlighted the extraordinary mark making that distinguishes Shaefer’s work. “What seduces you to closely examine his work is his intricate line work,” she said. “He’s an extraordinary draftsman.”
Frank also spoke to the exhibition’s larger themes, including Shaefer’s examination of walls, borders, and barriers—and the ways these structures can stand in tension with the ideals on which the nation was founded.
The evening offered an engaging encounter with one of contemporary drawing’s most distinctive voices, giving attendees a new perspective on the complexity of Colossi. The program concluded with appreciation for both the conversation and Shaefer’s work, which demands sustained looking as it poses urgent questions about displacement, history, borders, and human experience.
Colossi remains on view in Gallery B at MoCA\CT through November 15 as part of Looking for History.
