RICK VIAN
The Rapture of Understanding Nothing
Opening Reception:
Friday, April 17th | 6 - 9 PM
Exhibition on view April 17 - May 9, 2026
After decades of trying to understand the universe, and existence, and what we are, and how we should think, and behave and all that, I finally gave up; a long time ago. The only sensible thing left to do was to make art. For me that meant “to paint”. The problem remained as to what I was doing as an artist in the midst of all this. Since I am now fairly secure in the fact that I understand Nothing, (and “understanding Nothing” is not the same as “not understanding anything”) I approach a canvas in the same way I approach the universe. I am confronted with chaos in which I seek some kind of order. The chaos consists in all the blind, random marks I put all over the canvas to start the painting. The order is all of the shapes and composition that I find in that chaos and create out of the mess; rethinking, reworking, over and over, until it looks like something that has always been there.
RICK VIAN
About Available Work Exhibitions Video
Rick Vian has been painting and teaching in the Detroit Metro area since the early 1970s. He received his B.F.A. at the College for Creative Studies and his M.F.A at Wayne State Univeristy. He has taught painting at Wayne County Community College, Wayne State University, and was an Associate Professor at the College for Creative Studies until he retired in 2018.
He was active in the early days of the Cass Corridor, exhibited at the Willis Gallery in 1974 and has continued to exhibit in numerous venues locally, nationally, and internationally.