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RYAN WALLACE
THE UNANIMOUS HOUR | SUSAN INGLETT GALLERY -
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RYAN WALLACE, The Unanimous Hour V, 2020
Susan Inglett Gallery is pleased to present The Unanimous Hour, an exhibition by RYAN WALLACE, from 12 November 2020 through 16 January 2021.
For his fourth solo exhibition with the Gallery, Wallace continues to push his mixed media paintings to conjure an ethereal space between the material and immaterial. Repurposing fragments from earlier and developing pieces, the artist seams and layers these materials into and atop each other, forming hard-edged planes. The abstract shapes cut from canvas actively work with and against the other by folding, evolving, and repeating across the support. He excavates and manipulates the surface of his works to bring forth a multitude of textures and perspectives. Tiers of oil, acrylic, mylar, aluminum, and copper tape unite to evoke a captivating portal into Wallace’s process and vision.
Behind the artist’s formal abstraction lies a compendium of sources and materials rooted in reality, whether drawn from the natural world or the celestial realm. A cool-toned palette of whites, silvers, and blues originates from an aerial photograph taken by the artist of the Siberian landscape. The flickering action of his evolving forms mimics the light reflecting off Plexiglas flooring in his installation work and from chance domestic observations photographed during quarantine. This luminosity now radiates from within his paintings through aluminum and copper slivers that delineate undulating shapes. Bridging past iterations with the present, the ethereal with the earthly, the artist manifests something familiar, almost tangible, while taking the viewer on a pictorial journey into an exciting new realm. -
STUDIO VISIT WITH HUNTED PROJECTS
EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK, 2020 -
RYAN WALLACE, The Unanimous Hour VI, 2020
"I start with shapes of canvas or linen that have been cast off from cut larger sheets. I take these errant pieces and arrange them on the floor until compositions begin to reveal themselves. From there I kind of follow the lead. Once these fragments begin to form some imagery that seems worth pursuing, I will need to cut specific shapes to fill in empty gaps. I will trace the negative space and cut an intentional piece to fit in and meet all of its surrounding edges. So the whole first layer is made up of lots of pieces butted up to each other like a loose-fitting puzzle. I tape them together from the back with copper and/or aluminum tape and then reinforce this with fiberglass tape and gel medium. This makes a seam without any sewing. Since everything is hand cut with a razor blade, there are inevitable irregularities which allow for the aluminum and copper to show through on the face and act as drawn lines."
- Ryan Wallace
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The palette found in this body of work originates from an aerial photograph taken by Wallace over a remote region of Siberia. The artist pinned the photo up in his studio to serve as his inspiration and guide. Deep blue and white swirls weave in and out of the landscape, an icy palette that informs the brilliant light and inky dark of the series.
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While working in his studio, Wallace played Lungfish's 1999 album, The Unanimous Hour, the origin for the title of the exhibition: "I often title works and shows according to what I have been listening to in the studio. It plants a marker in my memory about the time in studio while making each body of work. [...] The poetry of the title also just felt appropriate. Everyone in this weird holding pattern."
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Chance observations in the quarantine domestic setting afforded a new source of inspiration for the artist. For example, light reflecting off the refrigerator cast geometric patterns on the kitchen walls, suggesting the flickering, abstract shapes that found their way into the artist's paintings. Wallace captures the luminosity of light itself through both palette and material.
"Seeing my reflection off the fridge embedded in such similar shapes to what I had been working with was shocking," the artist explained. "I thought that I was done with the figure but the image seemed so appropriate that I wanted to try it out. It still feels open ended as far as interpretation and I think lends a nice key to looking at the 'abstract' works through a new lens."
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"I was struck by how my wife, children, and I were spending more time than ever physically together as a family, but each of us had to pursue their own school, social, and work lives independently throughout the day. So it felt like four totally different electronic universes under the same roof for a lot of the time. Adapting to not having access to my regular routines of exercise, studio, and everything made me feel really inside my head. Self-portrait seemed appropriate for the time and it just presented itself to me right there on the wall."- Ryan Wallace
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EXHIBITION WALK-THROUGH
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RYAN WALLACE (b.1977, NYC) lives and works in Brooklyn and East Hampton, NY. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recent solo exhibitions include Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco; 56 Henry, NYC; University of the Arts, Philadelphia; and Cooper Cole, Toronto. Work has recently been exhibited at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence; ICA at MECA, Portland; Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach; Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn; Marjorie Barrick Museum, Las Vegas; and the Elaine de Kooning House, East Hampton, among others. Wallace’s works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence; and the Watermill Center, Watermill, among others.
RYAN WALLACE: The Unanimous Hour
Past viewing_room
