Unlanding. Such a curiously immaterial word for a materially dense work. In his new multimedia paintings, Ryan Wallace takes license to untether from former processes and follow a path set out primarily by intuition and experience. Historically each body of work has given rise to the next, with materials and compositions dictated by the previous generation. Elliptical templates used to generate structural components originated from shapes of light cast by reflective media within earlier installations. Those shapes and materials have generated second, and third iterations of pictorial ingredients leading to these spatially expansive new paintings.
Material qualities now give way to the ethereal. While decidedly abstract, one never loses the sense that these visually deft pictures arrived from observation. Experimenting with diverse saturations and tones, the artist hints at palpable atmospheres by blurring cut lines and hard-edged shapes. Surface excavations add texture and complexity to built planes of salvaged paint, canvas, linen, rubber, masonite, and assorted trace elements. Reflected light now glows from within, captured between fissures of aluminum embedded in Wallace’s painterly strata. A shift in sightline unleashes a wealth of new details altering the experience of the work. Shapes appear to repeat, rotate, invert, evolve and flit from one canvas to the next in a collaborative effort. Material becomes immaterial and we become unlanded.
Ryan Wallace was born in 1977 in New York City, and lives and works in Brooklyn and East Hampton, New York. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recent solo exhibitions include 56 Henry, New York; Cooper Cole, Toronto; and Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco. Recent two-person shows have been with Rosy Keyser at the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, Portland and with John Riepenhoff at the Elaine DeKooning House, East Hampton. Work has recently been exhibited at BAM, Brooklyn; Marjorie Barrick Museum, Las Vegas; Anat Egbi, Los Angeles; Albada Jelgersma, Amsterdam; Christian Larsen, Stockholm; Jerome Pauchant Gallery, Paris; Rachel Uffner Gallery, NYC; University of the Arts, Philadelphia; and V1 Gallery, Copenhagen. Wallace’s works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; RISD Museum, Providence; and the Watermill Center, Watermill; among others.
