“Play” Exhibition

Ricco/Maresca Gallery

This event has ended.

Aligning with Ricco/Maresca’s ongoing mission to promote the crossover of self-taught, outsider, and vernacular art into the modern and contemporary arenas, Play presents a collection of outstanding game boards made between the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
Created as functional objects by unknown American artists, these examples of parcheesi, backgammon, halma, checkers, Chinese checkers, mills, and solitaire (among others) have transcended their original purpose and stand on their own as cousins of modern art.
This exhibition decontextualizes these works to highlight their concrete beauty—and their visual affinities with minimalism and geometric abstraction, which they often precede—but it also acknowledges the mystery and gravitas that they possess as objects that once participated in everyday life.