Richard Rezac
Richard Rezac is one of the most influential American sculptors of his generation. Starting from drawing, Rezac is known to carefully craft sculptures of a distinctly unique character in a variety of materials, including aluminum, bronze, paint, maple wood, cherry wood, plaster, silk, and cotton. They have obvious references to furniture and architectural detail and always insist on their domestic relatability to the human body. The work has a fluid relationship with matter-of-factness, which is where it dovetails into the uncanny. At first glance, it might seem familiar or explainable in everyday terms, but upon closer inspection, it reveals itself to be something much stranger and altogether mystifying. Yet more deliberate sculpture could hardly be said to exist. “At times his devotion,” remarked the painter Thomas Nozkowski, “to getting some little thing right seems most religious in its fervor.”
Richard Rezac (b. 1952, Lincoln, Nebraska) lives and works in Chicago. Since 2000, he has had 32 solo exhibitions, including at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Feature Inc., New York, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, Luhring Augustine, New York, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles and James Harris Gallery, Seattle. Until his retirement in 2019, he was Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in both the Painting and Sculpture Departments. He has received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, among others. His sculpture is in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Dallas Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, The Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, and Yale University Art Gallery, among others.
Untitled, 2015. Painted maple wood and aluminum, 10 x 10 x 27 in (25.4 x 25.4 x 68.6 cm)
Untitled, installation image
Idesta, 2025. Cast bronze, cast aluminum and painted cherry wood, 20¾ x 24 x 4¼ in (52.71 x 60.96 x 10.8 cm)
Untitled, 2025. Painted cast bronze and aluminum, 5 1/4 x 9 x 10 1/2 in (13.3 x 22.9 x 26.7 cm)
Installation image, Tracery, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2026
Dreigesicht (Hurson), 2016. Cast bronze, nickel-plated cast bronze, 15¾ × 5¾ × 1½ in (39.95 x 14.61 x 3.81 cm)
Untitled, 2025. Painted cherry wood and aluminum, 14 3/4 x 14 1/4 x 1 3/4 in (37.5 x 36.2 x 4.4 cm)
Nemaha, 2010. Nickel-plated cast bronze, 14½ × 9¼ × 3 in (36.83 × 23.495 × 7.62 cm)
Nemaha, detail
Untitled, 2024. Painted cast bronze, aluminum and painted aluminum, 24 x 20 x 2 3/4 in (61 x 50.8 x 7 cm)
Untitled, detail
Study for Untitled, 2024. Graphite and colored pencil on paper, 29 x 23 in (73.7 x 58.4 cm)
Installation image, Tracery, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2026
Untitled, 2023. Cast bronze and aluminum, 18 x 26 in (45.7 x 66 cm)
Untitled, installation image
Study for Untitled, 2023. Graphite and colored pencil on paper, 32 x 29 in (81.3 x 73.7 cm)
Untitled (20-02), 2020. Cast bronze, painted wood, aluminum, 29 x 25 x 3¼ in (73.66 x 63.5 x 8.255 cm)
Installation image, Tracery, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2026
Untitled, 2019. Plaster and wood on painted wood stand, 38 3/4 x 36 3/4 x 16 1/4 in (98.4 x 93.3 x 41.3 cm)
Untitled, detail
Untitled (19-03), 2019. Cast hydrocal, aluminum, 23 x 23 x 5¼ in (58.42 x 58.42 x 13.34 cm)
Honen's Visitor, 2025. Cast bronze, aluminum and painted wood, 35 1/2 x 32 x 2 1/2 in (90.2 x 81.3 x 6.3 cm)
Installation image, Tracery, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2026
Untitled, 2024. Cast bronze and hand-dyed silk, 8 x 5 1/2 x 6 in (20.3 x 14 x 15.2 cm)
Untitled, 2023. Cast bronze, aluminum and paint, 7¾ x 14¾ x 15 in (19.69 x 37.47 x 38.1 cm)
Set, 2023. Cast bronze, cherry wood and aluminum, 25 1/2 x 12 x 10 1/2 in (64.8 x 30.5 x 26.7 cm)
Untitled, 2024. Cast bronze, cast hydrocal and painted wood, 24¼ x 30½ x 2¼ in (61.6 x 77.47 x 5.72 cm)
RECENT EXHIBITIONS
Tracery
Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles
Solo Show
February 24 - April 18, 2026
Sliced Tropics and Cosmic Dancers
Luhring Augustine, New York
Group Show
September 10 - October 25. 2025
Material Instinct
Post Times, New York
Group Show
June 27 - August 9, 2025
Julia Fish, Richard Rezac, Nancy Spero, Anne Wilson
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
Group Show
January 10 - March 1, 2025
The Third Perspective
The Merode, Brussels
Group Show
January 8 - July 11, 2025
Abridged
James Harris Gallery, Dallas
Solo Show
January 2, 2025—February 22, 2025
Parloir
Tournai, Belgium
Group Show
September 27 - 29, 2024
Astrup Fearnley Collection
Sculpture Milwaukee, Milwaukee
Group Show
August 31 - December 21, 2024
Naked Name
Derosia, New York
Group Show
June 28 - July 27, 2024
Patterns
Luhring Augustine, New York
Group show
June 20 - August 2, 2024
MASA + Luhring Augustine
MASA & Luhring Augustine, Mexico City
Group Show
February 6 - March 23, 2024
Setting
Misako & Rosen, Tokyo
Solo Show
April 9 - May 14, 2023
Harlequin
Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin
Solo Show
September 9 - October 14, 2023
Azure
Sydney, Sydney
Solo Show
April 23 - May 28, 2022