Robert Ryman
19 Feb - 27 Mar 2010
ROBERT RYMAN
"Large-small, thick-thin, light reflecting, light absorbing"
Feb 19, 2010 - Mar 27, 2010
PW 57
NEW YORK, February 2, 2010—This February Robert Ryman will install an exhibition of new works at PaceWildenstein’s 32 East 57th Street gallery. The artist will transform the gallery space with nearly thirty paintings, measuring between 10" to 30" inches squared, and featuring a wide range of experimentation in materials and supports. The exhibition will open on February 19 and will be on view through March 27, 2010.
For more than five decades, Robert Ryman has been engaged in an ongoing experiment with painting. He constantly seeks to modify his approach, resisting the comfort of tendency and maintaining the freshness of an unchartered territory. From each experience Ryman gleans the variables for a revised proposition and the impetus to propel him towards his next move.
This encyclopedic exhibition presents a vast range of facility with the material properties of paint on a variety of supports used both individually and in conjunction with one another, including wood, MDF board, aluminum, and stretched cotton. One-third of the works on view are painted on Tyvek, an extremely thin industrial material composed of spunbonded Olefin. Although Tyvek has the appearance of paper, the material is deceivingly strong. The artist approaches the new works with paints possessing varying properties, such as acrylic varnish, enamel, and epoxy, in addition to graphite and ink. Penciled grids float in and out of focus, sometimes obscured by paint, sometimes left uncovered.
In Ryman’s work, process is not tangential to life; perception and context work together to create an overall aesthetic experience for the viewer. The painted field and the choice of fasteners that he uses—which mark the physical transition from the painting to the wall—are carefully considered for their composition. To hang his new Tyvek paintings on the wall Ryman will use staples, which are an integral part of the aesthetic of the works.
It is light itself which activates Ryman’s works—not “illusionistic light,” which is “painted into a painting” and “can be made with color,” the artist explains, but “real light,” which is “the light by which the paintings are seen,” and perhaps the most difficult variable for him to control. In his statement which accompanies the show, he writes:
In my studio I see the paintings with daylight from above, on cloudy and sunny days, and in incandescent light, in various strengths, without daylight. It is not just the intensity of the light, but the direction of the source that is important, and in each light situation the paintings looked different. At one point, I thought I would not be able to show the paintings because I could not know how they would look. How is someone going to know how the paintings work with light? However, I quickly got over that. Paintings don’t have much meaning unless they go out into the world.
This January, the artist’s newly reinstalled galleries at Dia:Beacon in Beacon, New York opened to the public. The installation, conceived by the artist in consultation with Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation, reorients viewers within the space, allowing them to look at Ryman’s works afresh. Ryman also recently undertook a major reinstallation of his galleries at Hallen für Neue Kunst in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Returning to the museum in 2008—for the first time in 12 years—to revisit the permanent exhibition of his work that was first installed in 1983, he decided to transform the galleries into a “gesamtkunstwerk”—a synthesis, or total experience, composed of 30 paintings from 50 years of work.
Last Spring MIT Press published the first book-length study of the artist, Robert Ryman: Used Paint, written by Suzanne P. Hudson, Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The book, which explores Ryman’s ongoing experimentation with the components of painting, is divided into chapters which define the basic elements of the artist’s work: “Primer," "Paint," "Support," "Edge," and "Wall."
Robert Ryman (b. 1930, Nashville, TN) attended the Tennessee Polytechnic Institute and the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, TN. After enlisting in the United States Army (1950-52), he moved to New York City to play Jazz. In 1953 he took a temporary job (where he would ultimately work for 7 years) as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art. Soon after, he would decide to devote his career towards painting. Since Ryman’s first solo exhibition in 1967, his work has been the subject of over 100 solo exhibitions in 12 countries.
Last year, The Menil Collection, Houston, presented Contemporary Conversations: Robert Ryman, 1976, the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the pivotal year in the artist’s career during which he made important formal explorations of spatial composition. The artist was also the subject of significant exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 2007 and at Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2006. Major retrospectives of Ryman’s work have been organized by the Tate Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1993-94) which also travelled to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Haus der Kunst, Munich, whichtraveled to the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2000-01); The Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art (2004); and the Dallas Museum of Art (2005-06).
Ryman is a four-time exhibitor at the Venice Biennale: 1976, 1978, 1980, and most recently, the 2007 exhibition Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense. His work has also been included in Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1972, 1977, 1982), Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York (1977, 1987, 1995) and Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1988).
In 2005 Ryman was named the Japan Art Association Praemium Imperiale laureate. The same year, he received the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation prize, Zurich, and accepted an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Montserrat College of Art in Massachusetts. Ryman was elected Vice President of Art for The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York in 2003 and served as a member of the Art Commission for the City of New York in 1982. Ryman’s accolades also include the Skowhegan Medal from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (1985) and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1973).
Ryman’s work can be found in over 40 public collections throughout the United States and abroad, including Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
"Large-small, thick-thin, light reflecting, light absorbing"
Feb 19, 2010 - Mar 27, 2010
PW 57
NEW YORK, February 2, 2010—This February Robert Ryman will install an exhibition of new works at PaceWildenstein’s 32 East 57th Street gallery. The artist will transform the gallery space with nearly thirty paintings, measuring between 10" to 30" inches squared, and featuring a wide range of experimentation in materials and supports. The exhibition will open on February 19 and will be on view through March 27, 2010.
For more than five decades, Robert Ryman has been engaged in an ongoing experiment with painting. He constantly seeks to modify his approach, resisting the comfort of tendency and maintaining the freshness of an unchartered territory. From each experience Ryman gleans the variables for a revised proposition and the impetus to propel him towards his next move.
This encyclopedic exhibition presents a vast range of facility with the material properties of paint on a variety of supports used both individually and in conjunction with one another, including wood, MDF board, aluminum, and stretched cotton. One-third of the works on view are painted on Tyvek, an extremely thin industrial material composed of spunbonded Olefin. Although Tyvek has the appearance of paper, the material is deceivingly strong. The artist approaches the new works with paints possessing varying properties, such as acrylic varnish, enamel, and epoxy, in addition to graphite and ink. Penciled grids float in and out of focus, sometimes obscured by paint, sometimes left uncovered.
In Ryman’s work, process is not tangential to life; perception and context work together to create an overall aesthetic experience for the viewer. The painted field and the choice of fasteners that he uses—which mark the physical transition from the painting to the wall—are carefully considered for their composition. To hang his new Tyvek paintings on the wall Ryman will use staples, which are an integral part of the aesthetic of the works.
It is light itself which activates Ryman’s works—not “illusionistic light,” which is “painted into a painting” and “can be made with color,” the artist explains, but “real light,” which is “the light by which the paintings are seen,” and perhaps the most difficult variable for him to control. In his statement which accompanies the show, he writes:
In my studio I see the paintings with daylight from above, on cloudy and sunny days, and in incandescent light, in various strengths, without daylight. It is not just the intensity of the light, but the direction of the source that is important, and in each light situation the paintings looked different. At one point, I thought I would not be able to show the paintings because I could not know how they would look. How is someone going to know how the paintings work with light? However, I quickly got over that. Paintings don’t have much meaning unless they go out into the world.
This January, the artist’s newly reinstalled galleries at Dia:Beacon in Beacon, New York opened to the public. The installation, conceived by the artist in consultation with Yasmil Raymond, Curator, Dia Art Foundation, reorients viewers within the space, allowing them to look at Ryman’s works afresh. Ryman also recently undertook a major reinstallation of his galleries at Hallen für Neue Kunst in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Returning to the museum in 2008—for the first time in 12 years—to revisit the permanent exhibition of his work that was first installed in 1983, he decided to transform the galleries into a “gesamtkunstwerk”—a synthesis, or total experience, composed of 30 paintings from 50 years of work.
Last Spring MIT Press published the first book-length study of the artist, Robert Ryman: Used Paint, written by Suzanne P. Hudson, Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The book, which explores Ryman’s ongoing experimentation with the components of painting, is divided into chapters which define the basic elements of the artist’s work: “Primer," "Paint," "Support," "Edge," and "Wall."
Robert Ryman (b. 1930, Nashville, TN) attended the Tennessee Polytechnic Institute and the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, TN. After enlisting in the United States Army (1950-52), he moved to New York City to play Jazz. In 1953 he took a temporary job (where he would ultimately work for 7 years) as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art. Soon after, he would decide to devote his career towards painting. Since Ryman’s first solo exhibition in 1967, his work has been the subject of over 100 solo exhibitions in 12 countries.
Last year, The Menil Collection, Houston, presented Contemporary Conversations: Robert Ryman, 1976, the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the pivotal year in the artist’s career during which he made important formal explorations of spatial composition. The artist was also the subject of significant exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 2007 and at Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2006. Major retrospectives of Ryman’s work have been organized by the Tate Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1993-94) which also travelled to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Haus der Kunst, Munich, whichtraveled to the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2000-01); The Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art (2004); and the Dallas Museum of Art (2005-06).
Ryman is a four-time exhibitor at the Venice Biennale: 1976, 1978, 1980, and most recently, the 2007 exhibition Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense. His work has also been included in Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1972, 1977, 1982), Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York (1977, 1987, 1995) and Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1988).
In 2005 Ryman was named the Japan Art Association Praemium Imperiale laureate. The same year, he received the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation prize, Zurich, and accepted an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Montserrat College of Art in Massachusetts. Ryman was elected Vice President of Art for The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York in 2003 and served as a member of the Art Commission for the City of New York in 1982. Ryman’s accolades also include the Skowhegan Medal from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (1985) and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1973).
Ryman’s work can be found in over 40 public collections throughout the United States and abroad, including Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.