Richard Turner: No Ideas but in Things

September 12 – November 19, 2022

Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA

Forever Now For Now, 2022; Essay

Harvey, Doug. Random Display: Richard Turner’s “No Ideas But In Things”, Less Art, November 17, 2022

Miranda, Carolina A. An installation by artist Richard Turner imagines the night sky, 18th century style, Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2022

With No Ideas but in Things Richard Turner presents an everchanging environment that reprises and advances his 50+ year long career as an artist and educator. Unfettered by chronology, the artist assembles a discontinuous mise-en-scene using objects and furniture from his home and artworks from his studio, some dating back to the 1960s. While Turner has been a prolific exhibiting as well as publishing artist, many of the works that comprise the exhibition will be shown for the first time. Sculptures, drawings, paintings and found objects are newly configured and contextualized to create a space that is equally a gallery, an atelier and a dwelling. In an ongoing interplay between the artist and the gallery team the elements of the exhibition undergo daily changes, rendering in material the infinite possibilities of “a hundred visions and revisions”.

Richard Turner is a Professor Emeritus at Chapman University where he taught contemporary Asian art history and studio art and curated over seventy exhibitions as Director of Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery. He lived in Saigon, Vietnam from 1959 – 196 and studied Chinese painting and language in Taipei in 1963 – 1964, as well as Indian miniature painting in Jaipur, Rajasthan in 1967 – 1968, while on a Fulbright scholarship. His travels in Asia have been a lifelong point of reference to his work. Turner has worked as a public artist for over thirty years on projects ranging from metro stations, public parks and water treatment facilities to a justice center, a veterans’ memorial, and a university chapel. He has worked independently and as a member of a design team, collaborated with architects, engineers, landscape architects and other artists. His public work is guided by a desire to make works that are accessible but not obvious, pieces that reveal themselves over time to a diverse audience.