Rives Granade sounds strikingly similar to Rio Grande, a river in the Southwest. Rives Granade is an artist from the opposite side of the South, however — Mobile, Alabama, in the Southeastern United States, to be exact. I could hear a slight tinge in his voice — a Southern drawl — and that’s when I knew we were going to have a nice conversation that wouldn’t be located anywhere near a river.
Granade’s recent solo exhibition Red Poem at Ochi Projects (closed December 19, 2015) in Los Angeles highlighted his new series of paintings and sculpture that left me wondering about the ways one can create the illusion of space within a two-dimensional canvas, while also examining the space between language and poetry.
