BTW / Collages, Assemblages and Prints employs collage cutouts from magazines and graphic interventions in the style of Constructivism. The Constructivist Movement’s graphical ideas centered on tectonics, texture and construction.

El Lissitzky employs the Constructivist ideals in Post World War I Russia with a political poster featuring red and white structural cut outs. In Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge from 1919, El Lissitsky elicits his support for the Bolsheviks (red) against the whites (Kerenski). More importantly, Lissitzky, a trained architect, breaks away from traditional art and designs formality and engages the community in a new set of ideas and graphic design.

Similarly, like the Bauhaus school that follows Lissitzky ideas, Rick explores the devices and notions of Constructivism through visual storytelling.

The composition of Rick’s diagrammatic collages, sourced from a garage sale collection of 1970’s Ebony magazines, speak to the rise of the—so-called—African American middle-class. The diagrams and images form the basis of a conversation about privilege, about class and equality and being middle-class; with humor and parody. The contemporary source material, combined with drawings and cut paper, resembles the photomontages of Man Ray. The trace lines found in Rick’s compositions harken to the architectural influences of Lissitksy and Bauhaus teacher Herbert Bayer.