MUNICH.- Kunstverein München is showing the first institutional survey show of James Richards (1983 in Cardiff) recent work in Germany. His exhibition at Kunstverein München includes existing films as well as collages of moving image, united together through the Kunstverein’s four interconnecting gallery spaces and, as such, creating a narrative, visual and sonic 'curve'. As such, Richards uses his show to turn retrospection - artistically as well as referential - into a multifaceted spatial and contemporary experience. The exhibition accolades a dynamic two years of production in which Richards contributed to group shows at institutions such as the Biennials of Venice (2013), Lyon (2013) and Geneva (2014), Artists Space New York or the Fridericianum in Kassel (2013/14). Additionally, his work was nominated in 2014 for both the Turner-Prize and the German ars-viva Prize.

Working across film, installation and programming, Richards’ artistic practice embodies roles of a curator, sound designer, and film editor as well as an artist. Working primarily with the medium of film, one can see an on-going interest in collage in the artist's work. For example, Richards often assembles material by historical and contemporary artists and filmmakers, such as Stuart Baker, Stephen Sutcliffe and Julia Heyward, together with anonymous footage found, often by coincidence, online, in public or private archives or from abandoned VHS cassette tapes. One inning could say that brings these materials to a point of suspense through accumulation, where an image can break down into a feeling. Hence Richards succeeds in redirecting existing materials towards more explicit, contemporary re-representations of sexuality, gender and trauma. Sound also plays an important role in manipulating the affect of his method of appropriation.

His practice is often considered within a younger generation of artists who question authenticity and the effects of an increasingly digitalised society upon art, branding, advertising and cultural dissemination. Accordingly, authenticity over his collected material is not claimed by the artist by producing final works of art. Instead, the artist collects a stock of material over time which can re-assembled and re-modified for each different work, context or audience.