Reichardt to discuss exhibit at upcoming reception

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BROOKINGS – A busy summer of work is on display at imPULSE, an exhibit by Peter Reichardt and Andres Torres at the South Dakota Art Museum. Reichardt, a studio arts instructor in South Dakota State University’s School of Design, will provide insights on his work at a Nov. 16 reception. The reception starts at 5 p.m. The exhibit runs until Nov. 26.

Reichardt said most of his work was done this past summer and was created specifically for this exhibit.

“It’s part of separate bodies of work that I’d been working on the past few years that deal with recreating collaged images of everyday or popular culture items to create new entities or new forms,” he said. “Those images are collaged together either physically by myself or digitally as a sketch. I then recreate that sketch by hand.”

Reichardt’s hands-on work can take many hours to get each piece just right, or to a point where he is left wondering what could happen next. He estimates that he spent up to 70 hours on each piece.

For example, Reichardt worked on each of the six bleach drawings for four or five hours at a time before hanging them to dry. When he returns to the bleach drawing, he is surprised by what happened using various bleach concentrations on the fabric.

“I have to embrace the fact that bleach is going to do what it wants to do. It’s going to spread and flow and change the nature of the fabric I’m working on. I can’t necessarily always account for or predict what’s going to happen,” Reichardt said of the nontraditional drawing method he started experimenting with in 2004.

“It’s always a surprise. I have an idea how it might turn out but I never know exactly what it’s going to actually end up being like,” he said.

Regardless of the medium, Reichardt wants viewers to come away with an “aha moment.”

“I’ve always been drawn to traditional and nontraditional drawing materials,” Reichardt continued. “The challenge of working with something that is unexpected as a drawing material drives the work. This show is a sampling of stuff I’ve been working on and will continue to work on; it’s not a definitive end to those works, just a moment in time.

“An exhibition is a nice resting area, a chance to see where I’m at and see where I need to continue to explore. As an artist, you want to continue growing and advancing toward an end that you don’t completely understand or want to know about until you get closer to it but that end always tends to get further away, because you see more, understand more and know there’s more to discover.”