‘Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain’ arrives at the Autry Museum of the American West.
When asked to describe the great Rick Bartow, gallerist and longtime friend Charles Froelick explains the contemporary Native artist didn’t see himself as a “conceptual artist” but rather as an interpreter who “tells stories through marks and images. ”His “stories” have gone on view everywhere from the Smithsonian to the White House.
But it took until 2015—one year before he died of complications due to congestive heart failure— for Bartow to be honored with his first major retrospective. Over the weekend, the traveling show debuted at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles.
“Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain” includes more than 100 sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints dating back to 1979. Together, the compilation of themes in the show, “Gesture,” “Self,” “Dialogue,” “Tradition,” “Transformation,” and “New Work,” weaves together a larger narrative of Bartow’s life and artistic achievements.