Who

Ritchie creates avant-garde, high-concept, large-scale installations that challenge critics and blow the minds of mere mortals.

Backstory

A London native, Ritchie moved to New York in 1988 at the age of 24, finding work as a housepainter and then as the superintendent of an apartment building near NYU. It was while working as a super, he says, that he started rummaging through the trash, picking up books about philosophy, science and history, subjects that would later greatly influence his brainy installations. His first art world gig was writing for Flash Art magazine; he later secured studio space in SoHo with fellow Brit Damien Hirst. Ritchie mounted his debut solo show in 1995: The science and religion-infused "working model" at Basilico Fine Arts on Wooster Street was well-received, but his big break came two years later, when he was selected for inclusion in the Whitney Biennial. (He showed paintings depicting his version of the creation myth.) Since 2000, he's been represented by Andrea Rosen.

Of note

Not content to work in just one medium, Ritchie makes paintings, sculptures and installations, all inspired by science and mathematics. At gallery shows, his sprawling paintings—which can be hundreds of feet long—move across the walls and onto the floor (making it extremely tough to figure out where you're allowed to stand). They're typically accompanied by massive 3D metal sculptures that are raised off the ground and resemble thousands of tangled wires. Ritchie's 2003 exhibit, "Proposition Player," was a microcosmic world functioning as an interactive game, complete with paintings, light boxes, murals, and a digitally animated craps table. A Ritchie sculpture, The Universal Cell, was the centerpiece of the group exhibition "Remote Viewing" at the Whitney in 2005, and he had an architectural-scale solo show, "The Universal Adversary," at the Andrea Rosen Gallery in 2006. Described by art critic David Ebony as "roadmaps to an alternate universe," your only hope of "getting" Ritchie's creations is if you're either a PhD, or very, very high.

In print

Ritchie collaborated with experimental writer Ben Marcus on the 2002 book The Father Costume, which the publisher cryptically describes as a "work where people themselves are merely costumes for the darker needs that drive them."

Personal

He met his wife, actress Garland Hunter, at his first show at Basilico. They had their first child in April 2004, and live in Tribeca.