Richard Barone’s Got A Secret: Ron Reihel

Fronted by the nervous guitar and earnest vocals of Richard Barone, the Bongos grabbed the torch from the Talking Heads to light the way into the 1980s for a second generation of eye-opening New York bands that sounded nothing like their predecessors. Dedicated to the proposition that the tired and huddled masses could still find comfort at CBGB (or at Maxwell’s across the Hudson River), the Bongos ruled the greater-NYC roost. A stimulating succession of solo releases, topped by this year’s Glow (Bar/None), leaves no doubt that Barone is still hitting on all cylinders, a vital and imaginative force in today’s music scene when most of his contemporaries have fallen by the wayside. Barone will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.

Barone: Ron Reihel’s sculptural paintings cross genres like I think the best music does. They are minimalist yet architectural, muted then vibrant. Working with light and the absence of light the way a photographer does, his futuristic landscapes can capture the shadow of the viewer and hold it on its surface for long stretches of time as colors change and evolve. Reihel himself reminds me of the onstage Iggy Pop: intense and driven, giving everything to his art. Explaining his work, he touches on the science involved (something about phosphorescent earth minerals), NASA, theories (“We are all made of light, and that’s why seeing it makes you feel so good”) and all aspects of his constructions with an electrifying passion. And boy, is the work impressive. From the smaller pieces, sometimes in the form of clear globes with glowing, orderly, constellations and nebulae inside, to the large, layered, angular masterpieces hung on the wall or standing alone. All are somehow as natural as they are other-worldly: glowing at night with the absorbed light of the day.

Video after the jump.