January 11 – March 24, 2013
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
Cordy Ryman's Studio
visible echoes For the past two decades Cordy Ryman has used materials found at hand to make abstract works that retain and reveal a connection to the human hand. Gathering 2x4s, metal, plywood, paint, cardboard, Velcro, glue, staples, sawdust and scraps from the studio floor, along with his own discarded artworks, he constructs hybridized works that hover between painting and sculpture. In an ongoing process of exploration and experimentation, repetition and reuse, the artist addresses the relationship between materiality and abstraction and demonstrates his intuitive grasp of both. This exhibition recaps Ryman’s recent career and features representative examples of three types of work: site-specific installations, smaller painted constructions and large composite “scrap walls.” While echoes of his past works are visible in the reshuffled scraps and repeated forms, Ryman’s variations on similar themes always appear fresh. Unpretentious and playful, his work respects the unfinished and elevates the imperfect. True hybrids, his works are first objects in their own right, constructed from found and recycled materials, but they also function as underlying supports for paintings. While Ryman is ultimately a maker of objects, those objects always incorporate painting. A skilled colorist, he not only explores different hues of paint, he also experiments with a variety of types, including fluorescent, pearlescent, enamel, acrylic, spray, sign and other industrial paints.
opposite: Windowboxing, 2013 installation at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
Ryman’s adeptness with diverse materials should not overshadow his fluency in the language of abstraction. Although he is an art world insider by birth and upbringing, (his parents are the artists Robert Ryman and Merrill Wagner, and his brothers Ethan and Will are also artists), he is uncomfortable with placing abstract art on a pedestal. Ryman recognizes that its aura can be a barrier to understanding, with a coded language decipherable exclusively by those “in the know.” It may have been a desire to counteract this perceived elitism and to make abstraction more accessible and “real” that led him to employ materials drawn from real life. Ryman is not subverting abstraction so much as demonstrating a profound faith that abstract forms can hold up to non-traditional media and might even gain additional meaning from them. The dynamic push and pull between his work’s physicality and its formal abstract content is one of its most consistent and fascinating qualities. While Ryman’s works are architectural in the way they relate to their spatial environments, they are also architectural in their construction; the artist builds his abstractions as much as he paints them. Windowboxing is a site-specific installation of fifty-four painted wood frame-shaped elements wedged together and stacked up the wall in a roughly triangular formation. Like many of the artist’s installations, this work reconfigures elements from earlier works. Ryman first created Windowboxing for a 2010 solo exhibition, salvaging much of the raw material from Windows, a site-specific installation shown at Lesley Heller Gallery in 2007.
left: Windows, 2006-07, enamel on wood, dimensions variable; photo courtesy of Lesley Heller Workspace center: Windowboxing, 2010, acrylic and enamel on wood, dimensions variable; installation view at Conner Contemporary Art, Washington, DC, Jan. 15 – Mar. 5, 2011; photo courtesy of DCKT Contemporary, New York, NY right: Windowboxing, 2010/13, acrylic and enamel on wood, dimensions variable; photo by Greg Leshé
In the 2010 version Ryman angled the forms above a static bottom row, making them appear to bounce off it, animating the work with an upward sense of movement. In the 2013 reinvention the same forms are piled atop the same row of boxes, but in the new setting they must also react to a narrow engaged column that bisects the work. This sets up an internal tension that differs subtly from the first version. What may look like haphazard and spontaneous pile-ups, were in fact carefully choreographed by the artist in response to specific environments. Like all of Ryman’s work, Windowboxing draws our attention to its physical reality as a series of objects on the wall, while simultaneously challenging us to see it as a formal arrangement of line, shape, color and composition. Unlike a conventional drawing or painting, this work asserts itself into real (as opposed to illusionistic) space. This is especially true when viewed obliquely, as the work appears more planar than linear, and the bright colors become more prominent. But no matter how threedimensional Ryman’s forms are, they always remain anchored to the wall. The importance of the wall as a support is further underscored by the reflected light that casts colored shadows and paints ghost images on the wall. The artist often chooses light-hearted and even humorous titles for his works. The term “windowboxing” refers to the solid black border wrapped around a television image when a widescreen picture must fit into a different format. This seems particularly appropriate for a work that is itself reformatted from old parts to fit a new space. And given the title, it is also tempting to think of these painted wood forms as actual window boxes—in this case filled with painted and reflected color in place of flowers. Ryman explores many of the same ideas in his smaller individual works. Like Windowboxing, Blue Trap considers the relationship of geometric forms to the wall. Despite its diminutive scale, this work incorporates squares and rectangles of various sizes that are constructed, painted or cut out. By utilizing negative spaces as shapes and layering the illusion of painted rectangles over an actual rectangular painted wood object, Ryman plays with the fluid boundaries between materiality and form.
In Trim Core a concentric maze of white wood strips frames a small pink recessed rectangle, which acts like a bright punctuation point of color. Tiny details, easy to overlook, add unexpectedly sophisticated elements, like the small line of pink fluorescent paint that seeps through a joint in the wood. It appears accidental, but it accents the work like a syncopated note in a jazz composition. The scuffed and abraded surfaces of the wood strips carry traces of a past life, with little scraps of glue and plywood acting as ghostly echoes of older works. This residue also indicates the passage of time. Ryman’s appropriation of these scrappy planks is both serendipitous and purposeful and his response to them is intuitive—an auspicious combination of chance and choice. Chop and Spin effectively illustrates Ryman’s practice of revisiting and reworking older pieces. In this case he took what he considered an unsuccessful painting, cut it into four pieces and rotated them into a new configuration. This segmentation reasserts the “objectness” of the work while injecting it with a new dynamism. As he often does, Ryman pays special attention to the edges of this work, painting them fluorescent red. Situating the work just in front of the wall casts a chromatic shadow that further emphasizes its edge. One might view Ryman’s frequent integration of shadows as another kind of echo, repeating the object’s outline. Red Mini is a small sculptural painting that reiterates Ryman’s fascination with edges. Painting the front of a single chunk of wood with shiny red enamel, and its right edge with a flat dark pink paint, Ryman adds a thin white line to separate the two colors. In contrast, he leaves the left edge unpainted, but traces the grain of the wood, exploring multiple meanings of “the edge.” Comfortable with their human scale and portability, Ryman has been making small works for twenty years. Although he has gradually increased their scale, the artist maintains a preference for works that do not exceed his “wing span,” and can be manipulated easily, like objects. Several years ago he began attaching wood scraps directly to the wall, effectively creating large three-dimensional collages. Since this resulted in an ephemeral artwork that was disassembled at the end of an exhibition, he devised a
method for making these “scrap walls” more permanent. By working in sections no larger than fortyeight inches square, Ryman can shuffle and rearrange the components like large puzzle pieces. These moveable segments allow him to cover larger areas, experiment with different arrangements, and establish rhythmic patterns and repetitions across the surfaces. With these large works he strikes an intuitive balance between random order and deliberate design. The four panels comprising Wave Echo Scrap Ghost are filled with painted and raw wood chunks, blocks, wedges and scraps salvaged from earlier installations. This work is a happy mix of spontaneity and deliberation, with Ryman freely quoting from his own previous work. Three of the four sections were repurposed from “Wave” installations—arrangements of painted boards that resemble dune fences. The upper left quadrant derives from Green Wave (2007), and the lower right is salvaged from Blue Wave (2009). The yellow, ochre, light blue and red painted scraps in the lower left section are recycled from a 2009 installation titled Third Wave,1 while the upper right quadrant is fashioned from raw wood scraps. The individual sections may be ghostly reflections of their former lives, but their shared scale, material, and repetitive format lend them a new monumental unity. Ryman selectively leaves remnants of labels, product information and hand-written notations on some of the scraps, referencing their original functions, and providing additional echoes from the past.
left: Green Wave, 2007, acrylic and enamel on wood, dimensions variable, Aberrant Abstraction installation view, Nov. 20, 2009 - Jan. 31, 2010, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas; photo by Michael Spillers center: Blue Wave, 2009, acrylic and enamel on wood, dimensions variable; photo courtesy of DCKT Contemporary right: Third Wave, 2009, acrylic and enamel on wood, dimensions variable; photo courtesy of DCKT Contemporary 1 Another work in the exhibition, Dudley!, was also made with scraps from this installation.
Ryman’s works are always responsive, reacting to their environments, their own layered histories and to one another. In his studio practice the artist often hangs an array of works on a large wall, observing the visual and conceptual relationships they create among themselves. It’s almost as if they become animated objects that belong to the same tribe, speak the same language, and echo each other’s ideas. By definition an echo is a repetition of sound produced by the reflection of sound waves from a wall, mountain, or other obstructing surface. In other words, an echo always needs to bounce off something in order to exist. It is a repeated response to an obstruction, making it an apt metaphor for the artist’s work. Cordy Ryman has been hollering at the same mountain for years. He has an enduring ability to hear something meaningful in the echoes, and to make them into something solid and substantial— something visible. While an echo is technically a sonic repetition, it has come to mean any lingering trace or effect, or even something that evokes memories. It is an effect that continues to resonate after the original cause has disappeared. Ryman likes to use objects that carry their own embedded histories as starting points for his work because they act as catalysts and create relationships to which he can react—like the mountain that ricochets a sound. This call and response between object and artist, between material and abstraction, is an echo that resonates throughout his work. While sonic echoes diminish and gradually fade, the echoes in Ryman’s art seem to grow stronger as they reverberate. In a 2008 interview in The Brooklyn Rail, Ryman noted, “A lot of my work, even still today, is all about reactions of one kind or another—reactions to elements within the materials, between different combined elements within a work, between the materials and the space around it, and so on…It’s sort of like a never-ending play, dance or game.”2 Maybe it’s like a never-ending echo. Mary Birmingham Curator
opposite: Cordy Ryman’s Studio 2 Phong Bui, “In Conversation: Cordy Ryman with Phong Bui” The Brooklyn Rail, December 2008.
exhibition
No Crossing 2, 2009
Blue Cracker, 2011
Trim Core, 2012
Chop and Spin, 2010
Coil Sweeping, 2012
Wave Echo Scrap Ghost, 2012
Dudley!, 2010
Bear Paw, 2012
Windowboxing, 2010/2013
Blue Trap, 2011
Photo by Kristin Maizenaski
Red Mini, 2008
Oreo Velcro Side, 2011
exhibition checklist Bear Paw 2012 Acrylic and shellac on wood 12 x 12 x 3 inches
Coil Sweeping 2012 Acrylic and sawdust on wood 13 ½ x 12 ½ x 1 ¾ inches
Red Mini 2008 Acrylic and enamel on wood 8 x 5 ¾ x 3 inches
Blue Cracker 2011 Acrylic on wood 11 ¾ x 12 x 3 ¾ inches
Dudley! 2010 Acrylic and enamel on wood 19 ¼ x 17 ½ x 1 ¾ inches
Trim Core 2012 Acrylic and enamel on wood 24 x 22 x 1 ¼ inches
Blue Trap 2011 Acrylic on wood and foam core 17 ½ x 16 x 1 ½ inches
No Crossing 2 2009 Acrylic and enamel on wood 14 x 11 ¼ x 2 inches
Wave Echo Scrap Ghost 2012 Mixed media on wood Four panels, 48 x 48 inches each
Chop and Spin 2010 Acrylic and enamel on wood 13 ½ x 13 ½ x 1 inches
Oreo Velcro Side 2011 Acrylic, Velcro and industrial paint on wood 16 x 14 ¾ x 1 inches
Windowboxing 2010/2013 Acrylic and enamel on wood Dimensions variable
All works courtesy of the artist and DCKT Contemporary, New York, NY All artwork and installation photographs by Greg Leshé (unless otherwise noted) Photographs of Cordy Ryman’s studio by Thomas Joseph Keelan
cordy ryman Education 1997 BFA with Honors, School of Visual Arts Fine Arts/Art Education, New York One Person Exhibitions 2011 Eli Ridgway Gallery, San Francisco, CA Windowboxing, Conner Contemporary, Washington, DC 2010 DCKT Contemporary, New York, NY Scrapple, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX Tempest, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL bars bars bars, TWIG Gallery, Brussels, Belgium 2009 DCKT Contemporary, New York, NY Hail to the Grid, Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2008 Traver Gallery, Tacoma, WA Bars Blocks Stacks, Stalke Up North, Gilleleje, Denmark 2007 Kantor / Feuer Window, New York, NY 2006 Room Project, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY 2005 School Daze, Carol Shen Gallery, The Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, NY William Traver Gallery, Seattle, WA Modus Ponens, The Phatory LLC, New York, NY 2004 NK, Stockholm, Sweden 2003 William Traver Gallery, Seattle, WA 2002 Paintings, Suite 106, New York, NY 2001 William Traver Gallery, Seattle, WA Galerie Windows Bernier / Eliades, Brussels, Belgium 2000 Open Art, Galerie Tanit, Munich, Germany Cordy Ryman in Italy –The Pietrubbia Encaustic Constructs, Garner Tullis, New York, NY 1999 Tricia Collins Contemporary Art, New York, NY William Traver Gallery, Seattle, WA 1997 William Traver Gallery, Seattle, WA Windows Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
Image: Wave Echo Scrap Ghost (detail), 2012
Two Person Exhibitions 2011 Kiel Johnson, Cordy Ryman: Construct, Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, CA Selected Group Exhibitions 2011 The Working Title, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY New Wallworks, Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD Not About Paint, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, MA January White Sale, Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, NY On The Wall / Off The Wall, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, NY The Thingness of Color, DODGEgallery, New York, NY ART BLOG ART BLOG, Ross Bleckner Studio, New York, NY 2010 Summertime in Paris: Extreme Painting, Parisian Laundry, Montreal, Quebec, Canada 2009 Aberrant Abstraction: Keltie Ferris, Chris Martin, Cordy Ryman, Agathe Snow, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS 2009 On View 1, Stalke Galleri, Kirke Saaby, Denmark One More, Thomas Rehbein Galerie, Koln, Germany New Abstraction, Carol Jazzar Contemporary Art, Miami, FL Party at Chris’s House, Janet Kurnatowski, Brooklyn, NY 2008 Organic Geometry, Nicole Klagsburn Gallery, New York, NY One More, Esbjerg Museum of Modern Art, Esbjerg, Denmark Into the Trees, The Fields Sculpture Park at Omi International Arts Center, Omi, New York, NY Color Climax, James Graham & Sons, New York, NY The Ice Cream Show, Loyal, Stockholm, Sweden Crowded, David Lusk Gallery, Memphis, TN
2007 Lesley Heller Gallery, New York, NY Still Flying - 25th Anniversary Outdoor Sculpture Show, Brooklyn Waterfront, NY Artists Coalition, Fulton Ferry and Brooklyn Bridge Parks, Brooklyn, NY Small Work, Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY De Cirkel, Roger Raveel Museum, Deinze, Belgium 2006 Drift, Bronx River Arts Center, Bronx, NY 181st Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, National Academy Museum and School of the Arts, New York, NY Searching for Love & Fire, David Castillo Modern and Contemporary Art, Miami, FL The Seventh Side of the Die, Alona Kagan Gallery, New York, NY 2005 Greater New York 2005, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY Walls and Things, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY New York’s Finest, CANADA, New York, NY 2004 Fresh Paint, Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts, New York, NY Drift 2004, Valentino Pier Park, Brooklyn, NY 2001 Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Athens, Greece A Celebration of Abstract Art, The Wright Exhibition Space, Seattle, WA Selections from the Permanent Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL Awards 2006 Helen Foster Barnett Prize, National Academy Museum, New York, NY 1997 Rhodes Family Award for Excellence, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
Collections Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, WA Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS Raussmuller Collection, Basel, Switzerland Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL The Speyer Family Collection, New York, NY Virginia and Bagley Wright Collection, Seattle, WA Selected Bibliography 2011 Chun, Kimberly. “Cordy Ryman: Fluent in abstract art”, San Francisco Chronicle Walker, Maria. “In Conversation: Maria Walker Interviews Cordy Ryman”, NY Arts Magazine Butler, Sharon L. “Abstract Painting: The New Casualists”, The Brooklyn Rail Maine, Stephen. “Variety Trumps Argument at the Bronx River Art Center”, Artcritical Campbell, James D. “Extreme Painting”, Frieze Magazine Smith, Matthew. “Cordy Ryman at Conner Contemporary”, New American Paintings 2010 Smith, Roberta. “Cordy Ryman”, The New York Times Connor, Jill. “Cordy Ryman”, Art in America Westfall, Stephen. “Cordy Ryman,” BOMB Magazine Hellstrom, Patter. “Heartfelt Abstraction in NYC Exhibitions”, Decorati Wilson, Michael. “Scene and Heard–East Side Story”, Artforum 2009 Pagel, David. “Art Review: Cordy Ryman at Mark Moore Gallery,” Los Angeles Times Thorson, Alice. “Nerman presents ‘Abberant Abstraction’, a Group Show that Somehow Comforts,” The Kansas City Star
Lee, Sasha. “Cordy Ryman: Behind the Scenes Interview,” BeautifulDecay Genocchio, Benjamin. “Works from New Talent Seeking a Boldface Name,” The New York Times Draxler, Saskia. “Critic’s Picks–Cologne–One More,” Artforum Shapiro, Steve. “Mind-Set: Redefining Abstract Art at the Nerman and the Nelson,” KC Tribune Conner, Jill. “Cordy Ryman at DCKT Contemporary,” Art Quips 2008 Bui, Phong. “In Conversation: Cordy Ryman with Phong Bui,” The Brooklyn Rail Knowles, Carol, “Young at Art,” The Memphis Flyer Hoggard, Barry, “Notes on Pulse,” ArtCal Zine Davison, Dave R., “Ryman Brings Raw Edge to Traver,” Tacoma Weekly Gorbachev, Natasha, “Spew,” The Weekly Volcano, 2007 Buhmann, Stephanie, “Artseen,” The Brooklyn Rail Evans, Don, “Art Reviews,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Haber, John, “Imagined Architecture,” New.York.Art.Crit. 2006 The 181st Annual – An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Art (exhib. cat.) 2005 Tan, Lumi, “Greater New York 2005 Book.” Cotter, Holland, “Fanciful to Figurative to Wryly Inscrutable – the best in group shows,” The New York Times Heartney, Eleanor, “Report From New York I – Return To the Real?,” Art In America Wei, Lilly, “Top Two and a Longshot – personal recommendations,” ArtPulseNY.com Smith, Roberta, “Making an Entrance at Any Age,” The New York Times Image: Blue Trap (detail), 2011
acknowledgements The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is proud to present Cordy Ryman: Shuffle / Scrap / Echo. For the past two decades this artist has made inventive paintings and installations from found and recycled materials. The Art Center offers a unique opportunity for audiences to experience these accessible works that explore the relationship between materiality and abstraction. I would like to particularly thank Mary Birmingham, our Curator, for bringing this exhibition to the Art Center. I am grateful to Dennis Christie and Ken Tyburski of DCKT Contemporary for their instrumental role in lending work to the Art Center. I would also like to thank our Exhibitions Manager Katherine Murdock, Design & Publications Manager Kristin Maizenaski, Exhibitions Associate Yadira Hernandez and my entire staff for their hard work and commitment. I extend special gratitude to our Board of Trustees who support all that we do. Marion Grzesiak Executive Director, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey Board of Trustees
Sue Welch, Chair John J. DeLaney, Vice Co-Chair Malcolm D. Knight, Vice Co-Chair Jay L. Ludwig, Secretary Sarah Johnson, Treasurer Patricia A. Bell Marie J. Cohen Millie Cooper Kelly J. Deere Keith C. Dolin Jill Klieger David McLean Victor Nichols Mary-Kate O’Hare Mitchell Radin Jennifer Reinhardt Lacey Rzeszowski Ann Schaffer
Laura Schaffer R. Malcolm Schwartz Pamela Shipley Elizabeth F. Skoler Jim Welch Helaine Winer Elisa Zachary
Founding Visionary William B. Nicholson
Honorary Trustees
Sally Abbott Shirley Aidekman-Kaye Virginia Fabbri Butera, Ph.D Estelle Fournier Elizabeth C. Gump Marion Nicholson Joseph R. Robinson Roland Weiser
Image: Windowboxing (detail), 2010/2013
Staff
Marion Grzesiak, Executive Director Vanessa Batista, Interim Studio School Director Mary Birmingham, Curator Cara Bramson, Interim Programs Director Mari D’Alessandro, Interim Director of Development & Communications Ernie Palatucci, Director of Finance & Operations Rupert Adams, Building Superintendent Fabiana Bloom, Membership & Special Events Manager Nandita Chandel, Bookkeeper Jen Doninger, Customer Relations Associate Deborah Farley, Customer Relations Associate
Monica Finkel, Operations Manager AnnMarie Gervasio, Customer Relations Associate Yadira Hernandez N., Exhibitions Associate Kristin Maizenaski, Design & Publications Manager Alice Mateychak, Customer Relations Associate Teresa Mendez, Customer Relations Associate Katherine Murdock, Exhibitions Manager Leon Norris, Custodian Mara Norris, Custodian Anne Ortengren, Communications & Marketing Manager Barbara Smith, Registrar Pat Tiedeman, Accountant
68 Elm Street, Summit, NJ 07901 908.273.9121 www.artcenternj.org Gallery Hours Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday: 10 am – 5 pm Thursday: 10 am – 8 pm Saturday & Sunday: 11 am – 4 pm Major support for the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is provided in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Horizon Foundation of New Jersey, the WJS Foundation, The Merck Company Foundation, Audrey & Zygi Wilf and the Wilf Family Foundation, and Art Center members and donors. To learn more about Art Center programs, visit our website at www.artcenternj.org or call 908.273.9121.
Cordy Ryman's Studio
Cover: Trim Core (detail), 2012 Design by Kristin Maizenaski Printed by InnerWorkings Š 2013, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey ISBN: 978-0-925915-43-6