RYAN WALLACE
DO MAKE SAY THINK

OPENING: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH, 2020
EXHIBITION DATES: SEPT. 18 - NOV. 7, 2020

Romer Young Gallery is pleased to announce its third solo exhibition with New York artist Ryan Wallace.

Do Make Say Think consists of five paintings and continues the artist’s exploration into the perception of space, the combining of authored and accidental gestures, the marking of time and how information is created, copied and presented. Using a range of process-driven approaches and modern materials, Wallace creates works based on a continuous cycle of creation, destruction, painting, tearing, seaming, de-stretching and rebuilding. 

Historically, each body of Wallace’s work has informed the next, with materials and compositions dictated by the previous generation. The artist’s studio is the site of production where compositions evolve organically from the interplay of materials and phenomena. Drop cloths, strips of canvas, metallic tape on the floor receive incidental paint drips, footprints and light intrusions. The synthesis of luminescence, shape and material becomes the wellspring that initiates the artist’s self-perpetuating, self-sustaining, and self-determined process. His paintings are fluid and intuitive, beautiful and raw.

These new paintings delve deeper into composition and material qualities that give way to the more ethereal. Experimenting with diverse saturations and tones, Wallace hints at palpable atmospheres by blurring cut lines and hard-edged shapes. The artist excavates the surface and adds 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. Shapes appear to repeat, rotate, invert, evolve and flit from one canvas to the next in a collaborative effort.

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 Susan Inglett Gallery, 56 Henry, New York; Cooper Cole, Toronto. 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.For additional information, please contact the gallery at 415.550.7483 or email info@romeryounggallery.com.

To make an appointment, please use this link or email the gallery. And please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss any accommodations which would help you feel comfortable visiting the gallery safely.