An artist capable of so thoroughly invoking the all-encompassing emotionality of experiences like holding a child, grazing the hand of a new lover, or luxuriating in bed on your one day off is a rare thing already. Rarer still is one who can structure that intensity through the form of an object which has become so culturally banal, and in the process imply that every such unconsidered object could become the vessel of a powerful emotional richness. Using the wreckage of the same industrial system implicated in the contemporary landscape of bland material culture and in the subjugation of Black lives throughout the history of this country, Richard Dial stretches, bends, and modulates an instantly recognizable object until it is capable of carrying the wild intensity of life’s everyday intimacies.
In 1984, amidst the closure of the Pullman Standard Company factory where they worked for much of their lives, Richard Dial, with the help of his brother, Thornton Dial Jr., and their father, Thornton Dial, established Dial Metal Patterns. The family business was designed to take advantage of the collapse of the industrial economy that had long structured their home of Bessemer, Alabama, as well as the subsequent boom in availability of skilled labor. A sustained engagement with furniture-making through the company’s “Shade Tree Comfort” line of patio furniture led Richard to begin making chairs as art objects, using both his mastery of metalworking techniques and an inventive, socially-engaged artistic vision to explore the possibilities of re-animating an object blunted by globalized industrial production.
An initial flurry of work in the late 1980s contributed to Dial’s early recognition, after which he shifted his focus back to the family business, leaving little time for artistic pursuits. When business died down, a second wave of creative activity in the mid-2000s prefigured his recent inclusion in major museum shows in New York, Houston, and Toledo, Ohio. Shortly after, Dial put his artistic production on hold once more as caring for his aging father took precedence. In recent years, he has resumed making work, creating the series presented here: a reflection on the long process of caring for his parents and other deeply intimate family experiences, placing everyday concerns about love, friendship, and labor on their properly spiritual plane.
Richard Dial (b. 1955, Bessemer, Alabama) has exhibited at the Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, Ohio), the Michael C. Carlos Museum (Atlanta, GA), the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (Kalamazoo, MI), MARCH (New York, NY), Maus Contemporary (Birmingham, AL), the Museum of Art (Tallahassee, FL), and the Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, OH), among others. His work resides in the collections of the American Folk Art Museum (New York, NY), the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL), the Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, AL) the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX) and the Souls Grown Deep Foundation (Atlanta, GA).