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Bonnie Rychlak (born 1951) is an American artist, curator, and writer. She is known for her wax sculptures representing functional urban forms and actions of evacuation and for her practice of carving, casting wax, and melting it into fabric. Influenced by the work of Eva Hesse and the encaustic paintings of Brice Marden and Jasper Johns, she employs wax as a medium for sculpture in its own right rather than simply as a transition to being cast in bronze. Her work has been featured in various solo and group exhibitions and is included in collections in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Rychlak is also recognized as an authority on the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, having curated numerous international exhibitions and authored the accompanying catalogs. Her many publications on his art are cited in related scholarship.
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In a review of the works in Rychlak's 1989 solo exhibition at the Rastosky Gallery in New York, Art News critic Tiffany Bell, noted that “Rychlak contrasts the implied utility of the form with the preciousness of encaustic-a traditional material for art making. One might say it’s about transformation-either art humbled by the use of the mundane material or the materials made elegant and beautiful by the use of artistic form."Tiffany Bell, "Rastovsky," Art News, May 1989, p. 172
Reviewing the same 1989 solo show for Arts Magazine, critic Robert Morgan addressed Rychlak’s neo-minimalist approach, noting that “Bonnie Rychlak’s show at Rastovski (February 2–25) is an extension of neo-minimalist sensibilities but without the distancing effects seen in works by such artists as Ronald Jones, Allan McCollum, and Louise Lawler. Rychlak’s artful abstractions, often based on furnishings, have an erotic intertextuality that brings geometry back in touch with tactile reality."Robert Morgan, "New York in Review," Arts Magazine, May 1989, p.89.
Rychlak's work in the 1990s, which she termed photo narratives, "is strongly illustrative of an invitation to plumb unassailable depths in a series based on photographs, evoking cut up and hand colored 'secrets' covered by thickly pebbled glass. The image inside the clean white box, reminiscent of medicine cabinets, can be read as banal or sinister, or just mysterious." When a Village Voice critic visited Rychlak’s studio on Lafayette Street before her show opened in 1994 at Gallery Three Zero, she "was struck by the familiarity of the hay images in shadow boxes behind mottled-glass coverings. Rychlak’s hand colored photo blowups of family snapshots mounted on mirror several inches beneath the blurring glass are mementos from her childhood.”Arlene Raven, "Well Healed: Three Shows Redefine Art, 'Restoration," Village Voice (March 1, 1994): 88.
Along with these "photo narratives," as Rychlak refers to them, her sculptures in wax have been a constant enterprise throughout her forty-year artistic career. Briefly experimenting with colored resin in the early 2000s, she opted to return exclusively to carving of wax.Rita Compère, "Bonnie Rychlak”, Decors: Architecture/Design/Interior, Kunstenaars in N.Y. and August/September/October, Belgium and Netherlands, 2005, 94-97. "Her sculptures in wax share in a tale of disruption and playful decrepitude. She describes her practice as blunt but joyfully humorous. Her current subjects are unfixed, drifting between ambiguity and the actual, drawing on unsettling juxtapositions of materials and metaphors."
In 2021, Rychlak collaborated with fellow New York artist Jeanne Silverthorne, mounting the exhibition Down and Dirty at the Lupin Foundation Gallery at the University of Georgia. The exhibition, which subsequently traveled to the Arts Center at Duck Creek in East Hampton, NY, and Project ArtSpace in New York City (2023), showcased conceptual and formal affinities between the two artists' works. "The dichotomy between ugly and beautiful is foundational for both artists," wrote curator Terrie Sultan in the catalog for the exhibition, "as is the recognition that tough topics are often best addressed and alleviated with humor." Turning her attention specifically to Rychlak's work, Sultan notes that "the common floor drain--practical, functional, and so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible--is in her hands, simultaneously a geometric abstraction and a metaphoric conduit: The world is going down the drain, emotions drain away, countries experience brain drain . For Rychlak, however, the drains don't open. They imply another world, the mysterious, the unknowable down below, and what might lurk there."Terrie Sultan, "Rejectamenta," in Down and Dirty, Athens, Georgia: Lamar Dodd School of Art, 2021, p. 15-17
Rychlak's recent work embraces the dysfunctional and unwanted, forms that invoke urbanism, industry, and the failed environment. Her process is labor-intensive and transformative, using mutable materials such as beeswax and paraffin. This work was featured in the exhibition "Bonnie Rychlak: Don't overplay it, sugar"
/ref> In the accompanying catalog, Joanna Issak wrote: "The exploration of dichotomies is integral to Rychlak's artistic approach, which consistently seeks to expose the profound within the profane, the extraordinary within the banal, the beautiful in the abject, and the psychological within the physical."Joanna Isaak, "From the Psychological Depths of Drains to the Mouth of Truth," Bonnie Rychlak, Don't overplay it, sugar, Livingston Manor, NY: Catskill Art Space, 2025, p.1
Rychlak's work is in important private collections in Japan, the United Kingdom, Verona, Italy, New York and East Hampton, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. Public collections in the United States showcasing her work include the Bridgehampton Museum, New York, the History of Art and Architecture department at Harvard University, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center / Fine Arts Collection of the US General Services Administration (GSA), and the Department of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In Japan, her work is in the collections of Shizuoka-ken Prefectural Museum of Art.
Noguchi and the Figure (1999) was Rychlak's first international curatorial project. Organized for Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, it was the first critical analysis of Noguchi's sculptures in relation to the figure.Bonnie Rychlak, Foreword by Ian Buruma. Noguchi and the Figure. Exhibition. February – May, 1999, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey; and June – September 1999, The Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico, 1999. In all of her writings about Noguchi and his work, she examined his legacy through his process and strategies, allaying art history's tendency to mythologize him. Through some of her essays and exhibitions, she reflected on the popularized exemplification of his "spirituality" Zen No Zen: Aspects of Noguchi's Sculptural Vision. The Noguchi Museum, Sunnyside, Queens, N.Y. February 2002 to June 2002 as well as his understudied advances related to Japanese conventions of ceramics and furniture design.Bonnie Rychlak, “Kamakura,” Noguchi’s Romance with Ceramics. Exhibition cat. Fundacion ICO, Madrid, 2006 and Bonnie Rychlak "In Search of the Authentic" in Design: Isamu Noguchi and Isamu Kenmochi, Five Ties Publications, N.Y., 2007.
In 1981, Noguchi introduced Rychlak to thousands of negatives and notebook drawings connected to a world travel grant he received from the Bollingen Foundation in the 1950s that took him around the world over a period of six years. Hoping to use the material for another autobiography, Noguchi kept it private during his lifetime. Rychlak ultimately staged an exhibition of this project fifteen years after Noguchi's death, illustrating Noguchi's deep interest in other cultures and the journey's impact on his artistic evolution. The Bollingen Journey: Photographs and Drawings. Exhibition at The Noguchi Museum, Sunnyside, Queens, N.Y. February 2003 to October 2003. See Grace Gluek, "ART REVIEW; Modernist in the Making: Noguchi's Many Voices"[3]
During the Bollingen Journey exhibition at the Noguchi Museum, Elena Foster, founder and creative director of Ivory Press, visited the presentation and subsequently selected photographs for publication from the thousands of images not exhibited. Rychlak advised and wrote the commentary for the deluxe limited-edition book produced by Ivory Press. Isamu Noguchi: 18 Drawings, 18 Photographs. Introduction by Bonnie Rychlak. Essay by Pico Iyer. London: Ivory Press, 2007. [4]
After her employment at the Noguchi Museum, Rychlak organized On Display in Orange County: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture in 2011, which subsequently was incorporated into the project in California.Julian Bermudez, "Eye on art: Pacific Standard Time Focuses on City's Museums," Press Telegram, November 11, 2011. [5]/ She was also a curatorial consultant to noted entrepreneur, art patron, and philanthropist Henry Segerstrom and his estate from 2011 to his death in 2015. She produced several exhibitions for cultural projects in South Coast Plaza, California, and authored a monograph on the renowned individual.Bonnie Rychlak, The Courage of Imagination: The Cultural Legacy of Henry T. Segerstrom. New York and Paris: Assouline Publishers, 2013. Simultaneously she taught at the Pratt Art Institute and sat on the exhibition committee for the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York. In 2012, she organized an outdoor sculpture exhibition for the LongHouse.Jennifer Landes, “Bonnie Rychlak: A Curator’s Work Is Never Done,” East Hampton Star (April 24, 2012) From 2011 to 2018, she was a curatorial partner with Peter Hopkins, director and founder of ArtHelix, a Brooklyn gallery, helping organize several exhibitions for the gallery. ArtHelix
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