Ryan Crotty - "Never the Less" exhibition catalog

RYAN CROTTY |

NEVER THE LESS

RYAN CROTTY Never the Less

Regard Less “The colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.” – Edvard Munch At once, the translucent layers that cover the surface and ooze over the edges of a Ryan Crotty painting beg the viewer for a methodological understanding of these photographic paintings, but unlike each layer, it is not as transparent an answer. The techniques Crotty has developed in his current body of work are a luminous example of ‘letting the chips fall where they may.’

Specifically, he allows the translucent layers of paint and medium to create a bond with the surface of the canvas, buttressed by modeling paste to act as a “screen,” providing a backlit effect with very little interference, developing a vibrant color palette that seems to exist somewhere amidst RGB and CMYK. The inadvertent subject matter from the surface itself creates unexpected gradients and organic surfaces reminiscent of light-leaks or a scanner mishap resulting in brilliantly lurid color relationships. Touching on the original ideology behind colorfield paintings from the 50s and 60s, the subjects of these paintings are the colors themselves, and in Ryan’s work, the relationships develop as they are pulled together across the surface of the canvas.

The canvas acts as a support for the translucent paint to blend, and the primary colors turn to secondary and tertiary colors as the process takes hold on the surface, creating shapes like an unexpected imprint on the skin after sitting in a rod iron chair. With no strict narrative, the variations of edge quality begin to come into focus without deliberation or intention. Similar to that of film photography, the result of the canvases does not develop until the process takes hold, when the opaque gloss gel medium mixed with pigment dries transparently; just as when a roll of film is shot, the results are not known until development. The layers bleed over the side, like what one would imagine a gelatin print photograph would be.

Creating abstract, non-representational compositions of color is intended to create a perceptual phenomena with reference to the Light and Space movement, the minimalism of subject fulfilled by the perception of the viewer to the light working through the layers of oftentimes unconventional media.

Within each piece therein lies a unique story of not only the effects of color relationships, but also the mystery of the applications of different forms and motions. In Signs of Life, a shape of what seem like a pair of parenthetical marks made with a quick gesture of spray paint is actually the result of splitting a pool noodle and using it as a structural shape, integrating both the stretcher bar and more as part of the economy of image making. The Way We Shook is an eerily vivid image blurred, reminiscent of attempting to capture an object in motion or something elusive. In another way it is an optical illusion, the possibility of multiple subjects with one shape, or a reading from a seismometer predicting tremors and earthquakes with apocalyptic tones of fiery reds.

Other works like Come Down and Give you Power present a meditative quality, easing the mind with glowing layers of colors, some with vibrancy, and others with subtlety; a focused mix of saturation and neutrals. These works, with their broad use of a framed colorfield space operate as a sort of Rorschach test with their reflective quality.

Another Day in Paradise is not as gentle, though striking. The tension from the pull of the lapis over the hot pink, reads like an unsettling prophecy of a radioactive ice age in the not-so-distant future; an ironic nod to the painting’s title at a time where it’s unclear whether or not the world is trapped in a Sophoclean spiral attempting to alter it’s fate.

From the drama of chiaroscuro to the perceptual satisfaction of Op Art, Never the Less is an homage to the various iterations of light exploration throughout art history from which Crotty’s new body of work stems, exemplifying a complex knowledge and curiosity of the history of painting.

Amelia Baxter 2017

The Way we Shook, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 28.25” x 22.5”

Never Be Like You, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24� x 18�

Cool Your Jets, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 14” x 11”

Murmur, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 20� x 16�

Give You Power, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24” x 20”

Come Down, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24” x 20”

Go as Slow as I Can, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24” x 20”

I Like Me Better, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24� x 20�

All Down my Front, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24” x 18”

Lost in the Light, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 30� x 24�

Everything is Coming a Part, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24� x 20

Am I Just a Dreamer?, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24” x 18”

All Thoughts Slip Away, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 14” x 11”

Gray Matter, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24� x 20�

The Veil Between What is and What is Imagined, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 24� x 20�

Another Day in Paradise, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 20� x 16�

Left Traces on my Mind, acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on canvas, 16� x 12�

Ryan Crotty b. Auburn, NE

EDUCATION MFA, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, 2013 BFA, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 2004 ​ ​ SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS ​ 2018 Never the Less, High Noon Gallery, New York, NY Surface and Structure, Lux Art Center, Lincoln, NE ​ 2017 It Can Feel Overwhelming At Times, Columbus Art Gallery, Columbus, NE Nebraska Governor’s Residence, Featured Artist Exhibition, Lincoln, NE 2014 Ryan Crotty - Recent Works, Peru State College Art Gallery, Peru, NE 2012 Ryan Crotty - Controlled Burn, The Wall - Shaffer Art Building, Syracuse, NY ​ 2011 Passages of Obliteration, Michael Sickler Gallery, Syracuse, NY 2009 BITS, Handmade Modern Gallery, Lincoln, NE 2007 Ryan Crotty, Paintings, Handmade Modern, Brownville, NE SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2017 The Painted Desert, Part I, High Noon Gallery, New York, NY LUX Art Gala, Innovation Campus University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 2016 Euphoric Cataclysm, Tugboat Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE A deLUX Art Gala, Country Club of Lincoln, Lincoln, NE Medici Exhibition, Eisentrager-Howard Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE Spirit Exhibition, Museum of Nebraska Art, University of Nebraska, Kearney, NE

2015 Medici Exhibition, Eisentrager-Howard Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE A deLUX Art Gala, Country Club of Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 2014 Greater Nebraska, Lux Center For The Arts, Lincoln, NE 2013 The Nth Degree, 25 CPW Gallery, New York, NY 2012 Regional Small Works Show, State of the Art Gallery, Ithaca, NY Artists Collect, Michael Sickler Gallery, Syracuse, NY Lunatic Fringe (The Show), The Wall - Shaffer Art Building, Syracuse, NY Sugar Redux, Spark Art Gallery, Syracuse, NY National Wet Paint Exhibition, Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, IL 2011 Blue Sky, Shaffer Art Building, Syracuse, NY 8x8, Berlin, Germany SU@CU/CU@SU, XL Gallery / Clifford Gallery, Hamilton, NY These Walls Can Talk, Michael Sickler Gallery, Syracuse, NY 8x8, Spark Gallery, Syracuse, NY 2009 Dystopia, I?S Gallery, Lincoln, NE 2004 BFA Senior Show, Eisentrager-Howard Art Gallery, Lincoln, NE Alienation (Juried), Rotunda Art Gallery, Lincoln, NE 2003 Emerging Artists, 14th and O St., Lincoln, NE AWARDS Shaffer Award (MFA, Best In Show), Syracuse University, 2013 3rd Year Graduate Painting Award, Syracuse University, 2013 George J. Vander Sluis Graduate Painting Award, Syracuse University, 2012 Susan Parker King Graduate Drawing Award, Syracuse University, 2011

Ryan Crotty | Never the Less January 4 - February 4, 2018

EDITION OF 100

Publisher: Jared Linge HIGH NOON GALLERY 106 Eldridge St New York, NY 10002 Essay @ Amelia Baxter 2017 Design @ Jared Linge Printer: MagCloud magcloud.com

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