March 15, 2010

Joseph Ryan

Attention Returned, By Christina Kee

Joseph Ryan’s recent paintings of interior scenes present a world that is at once turbulent and still, domestically familiar and seductively strange. Through a storm of white marks, both muted and bright, the artist here conjures close-quartered spaces with a paradoxically atmospheric approach. With unwavering austerity of color and tone he coaxes a fragile vitality from subjects that are alternately thoughtful and sensual, beautiful and vulnerable.

Informed by an instinct aligned with that of the most dedicated of perceptual painters, Ryan has chosen to address fully the challenges inherent to a medium that is always quietly – though inescapably – philosophical in nature. Ryan’s new works, striking for both their ambition and modesty, serve as elegant explorations into problems of sight, sense, self and surroundings; and by extension into the degrees of distance that exist between one individual and another. 

On first approach to these compelling works, we might find ourselves identifying the subjects: people within recognizable spaces and rooms. We might also note the distinctive style and color use: sharp gradations of white offset by occasional delineations of hue. Yet the most prominent pictorial feature remains somehow elusive. With what might vaguely be termed “pictorial energy” the paintings manifest a force of form, shape and movement through cascades of small brushmarks that define, move through, and touch every object and space depicted. Ryan’s canvasses are a-buzz with an activity that is difficult to place both in terms of source or immediate purpose, particularly in the context of the still, even static, scenes being observed.

Prolonged viewing of these works suggests that Ryan’s aggregate of marks is nothing short of the pigment-and-oil result of sheer density of perception over time - a shimmering surface of distilled looking. It is as though the act of seeing has compelled the artist to return, over and over with the touch of his brush, to manifold points within the subject to convey its complexity onto the surface of the canvas. These  marks are not obsessive, and in no way related to the mannerist stutter of an uncertain hand; rather they are deliberate gestures, made exactly as many times as was necessary. They are invariably staked out with a clarity of intention, and reflect the spontaneous strength of a draughtsman marking a moment of understanding and invention.

Ryan’s method of application serves to emphasize both the unyielding quality of the painted surface and to make the viewer, with almost a sense of complicity, aware of the artist’s trick of creating a metaphorically spatial world within its confines. The tension between flatness and depth is of course fundamental to all painted images. What is unique in Ryan’s work is the extent to which the transition between these two forces is calibrated to an almost infinitely fine degree - every dash and stroke in the flurry effect of these paintings has a highly specific location within the constructed space. These insistent marks not only define forms and imagery but bring to life, in astonishing clarity, the palpability of the space itself. 

In Silent Crow (2008) a lone figure sits within what would be described as an “empty” bar, were it not for the thoroughness with which every inch of the space is treated. Conventional distinctions of fore- mid- and background seem rudimentary to the point of futility when applied to this spatially expansive composition, where presence is bestowed to the air itself in tiny increments throughout the painted surface.  The engaged viewer can follow intricate pathways of illusionistic depth in this carefully measured universe, traveling from a point very near the painter’s eye, then towards the figure to the space behind, only to find with some amazement when the farthest point is reached to be still up against the same uniform surface with which they began. The effect is a spectacular impression of visual abundance in what would otherwise be a spartan scene.

It is worth noting that Silent Crow echoes a history of melancholy drinkers in paintings, perhaps the most overt reference being to the Absinthe Drinker (1876) of Degas. Ryan’s relationship to paintings past and present is both broad and intimate, and this nod to an Impressionist past acts here as a reminder that painterly innovation occurs, prior to political, cultural or circumstantial factors on the level of the brushstroke itself. Whatever the artist’s intentions in this work, an appreciation of the mark as a central carrier of meaning seems crucial to a viewing of Ryan’s work, which, with its rigorous system of application and color, raises timely questions as to the contemporary relationship between drawing and painting, content and form.

In Ryan’s paintings geometries are both sought and imposed, unlikely correspondences are discovered and intuited, and boundaries of organic and linear forced to blur and interchange according to the painter’s caprice. Despite the tenacious process of visual research evident in his work, Ryan’s project has less to do with a visual translation of experience than it does with a highly inventive, if subtle, reconfiguration of material subjects into new identities within the individual intention of each painting.  A few of the  more teasing titles in the show point to this sophisticated process. Double Square (2009-2010) for example, refers both to a challenging canvas format, but presumably also to the congregation of square cushions and distant compositional right-angles that echo, pair and re-pair, in their complex play against the delicate forms of the figure. In similar manner a universe of correspondences begins to present itself throughout this recent collection. In Figure 8 (2009) arabesque patterns both within and external to the figure repeat in poetic refrain, seductively leading the eye from the curved form of the model’s tucked legs, to the curves of the breasts and upwards to the thoughtful posture of the pensively leaning head.

It is perhaps permissible to read into these paintings resonances between less tangible subjects as well, such as between the dense potentiality of a blank wall and the female form alluded to in Pregnant Wall (2009) or between the projected gaze of a figure and a implied ray of illumination in Self Portrait (2007). The result is a suggestion of a most ethereal theatre of activity operating in tandem with the paintings’ more solid subjects, one brought rhythmically to life by a nuanced system of marks mysteriously performing in mid-air.

Ryan’s paintings demonstrate a conviction that the parameters of known surroundings might be navigated again and again; and that attention might be meaningfully returned to the same subjects indefinitely. The approach has a particular resonance when turned to the subject of figure, friend, self or beloved. An uncovering of the emotional and psychological implications inherent to perceptual painting lie at the heart of Ryan’s current endeavours, and the formal sophistication of his works is inextricably linked to a charged approach to the subject matter. Two Triangles (2010) presents a baroque arrangement of variation on the double chevron shape, sparked in this case by the elegant twinned form of a female figure’s shoulder blades, spiralling out in echoes in the chair back, front and surrounding architecture. Amidst this pictorial complexity it is undeniable that this is absolutely and simultaneously a portrait of a beautiful woman, in this case the artist’s wife. The visual interest of the treatment is inseparable from the attraction of the subject.

In Blue Chair (2009) a figure reclines in a space replete with canvas and easels, as well as kitchen and domestic items: The artist’s work and living space appear to be one and the same. The subtle blurring of boundaries is emblematic of Ryan’s work, which thrives on the fusion of object and perception, and, at a certain stage, involves the complete application, even absorption of the self into the forms observed. Implicit to this artist’s ability to layer invention and perception, imposed order and existing disorder, is the ability to internalize what is external, and then to reverse the process in powerful material statements from within a fiercely individualized vision.

Christina Kee, New York, 2010