Ken Grimes: Evidence for Contact

Ricco/Maresca is pleased to present Evidence for Contact, a retrospective exhibition organized on the occasion of the release of a major book by the same title. Published by Anthology Editions (October 24, 2023), this volume is entirely devoted to the life and 40-year career of Ken Grimes.

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Grimes was born in New York City in 1947 and grew up in Cheshire, Connecticut. For several decades, he has diligently maintained a stark palette of black and white, which he believes is the most direct way of showing the contrast between truth and deception. Only recently, he ventured into a new series of works that incorporate basic colors to the same end. The artist’s paintings and works on paper, which oscillate between whimsical and stern—but are often both—are conceptual, never-ending variations on the themes of extraterrestrial intelligence and cosmic coincidence.

Grimes's work is in the permanent collections of the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the American Folk Art Museum. In 2018, the artist's work was selected as one of the exhibitions in a six-part yearly series titled “Field Station” at Michigan State University’s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. In 2019, he was invited to participate in the deCordova Museum Biennial. 

Click here to visit the online viewing room for this show and learn more about the works exhibited.