Bryan Ryley: Morning Briefing

bryan ryley | morning briefing

vernon public art gallery vernon, british columbia canada www.vernonpublicartgallery.com

BRYAN RYLEY MORNING BRIEFING

Bryan Ryley Morning Briefing

Vernon Public Art Gallery March 12 - May 13, 2020

Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3 www.vernonpublicartgallery.com 250.545.3173

Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon, British Columbia, V1T 2H3, Canada March 12 - May 13, 2020 Production: Vernon Public Art Gallery Editor: Lubos Culen Layout and graphic design: Vernon Public Art Gallery Copy editing: Kelsie Balehowsky Cover image: Soot, 2020, acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 54 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections Printing: Get Colour Copies, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada ISBN 978-1-927407-55-4 Copyright Š 2020 Vernon Public Art Gallery All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writing to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada.

Telephone: 250.545.3173 Facsimile: 250.545.9096 Website: www.vernonpublicartgallery.com The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profit society. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee/RDNO, the Province of BC’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, British Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donations and memberships. Charitable Organization # 108113358RR.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by:

table of CONTENTS

4

Introduction 路 Lubos Culen

7

Bryan Ryley and Lubos Culen in Conversation

23

Exhibition Statement 路 Bryan Ryley

21

Morning Briefing 路 Images of Works in the Series

64

Selected Biography 路 Bryan Ryley

3

Bryan Ryley: Morning Briefing

It has been thirteen years since Bryan Ryley’s exhibition titled Saltus was presented at the Vernon Public Art Gallery. While Ryley’s work has been focused on abstraction for the last forty years, there are some shifts in his approach to painting in his current studio practice. His interest always has been in contemporary painting theory and practice with an emphasis on the creative process and an examination of autonomous language in painting. The exhibition Morning Briefing documents Ryley’s quest for inventing new ways of constructing paintings. The exhibition of mid-sized paintings are complemented by a large painting and a suite of intimate small works on paper.

While the painting/collages appear to be austere in shapes and colour – the paintings contain large areas of black paint – longer observation reveals layers of different colours pushing from beneath the gauzy layer of the black paint. Despite the fact that Ryley’s paintings are structured in a way to emphasize the relationships of pictorial elements, there seems to be a lack of any implied narrative other than printed or photo-based vignettes obscured partially or wholly by layers of paint and other collage materials.

Ryley’s painting methodology is somewhat married to Abstract Expressionism, specifically in the employment of the concept of chance and accident which occurs during the process of constructing the images. While his processes are guided by a strict control of the medium - paint and collage elements – Ryley sets up the conditions for the chance mark making to occur. His previous bodies of work employed the use of a several foot long squeegee that moved the paint across the entire surface of the canvas in one movement, which resulted in a premeditated control of paint delivery, yet allowing the paint deposits to be somewhat random. Observing these bodies of work, one can start to observe Ryley’s mode of operation, which is focused on the autonomy of individual marks and their relationships to the pictorial spaces created by the combination of controlled structuring of composition and the random outcomes of the paint delivery and premeditated placement of collage elements.

The works in this recent body of paintings under the umbrella title Morning Briefing move Ryley’s methodology in a different direction. While the previous bodies of works employed the vectorial paint delivery, a felt sense of the marks having the beginning, duration, and linear orientation, the recent paintings are structured as dense pictorial spaces often featuring photo-based collage

4

elements. The ten small works on paper in the exhibition can be thought of as homage to artists investigating the possibilities of the language of systemic abstraction and collage, namely Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg. In these acts of bridging abstraction and representation, Ryley’s collages address the possibilities of implied narratives, however tentative they may appear.

In addition to photo-based elements in some of the collages, Ryley’s works in the exhibition Morning Briefing feature pictorial elements which include bits of used industrial tarpaulins. Here, the tarpaulin collage elements widen the propensity of communicating some narrative, however tentative, and bringing the unknown histories of their use to the viewer’s attention. The clues of possible narratives in Ryley’s works are encapsulated in the works’ titles; some are expressed as neologisms and offered to the viewers to interpret, others stand as labels for possible events that may have occurred that were based on Ryley’s associations.

Ryley’s works in this exhibition explore the possibilities of the synthesis of abstract language and its propensity to communicate possible messages. Viewing the images, the viewer is introduced to the visual language with dense readings; whether interpretable as possible narratives or just being abstract autonomous entities. Ryley’s works communicate the intensity of his studio practice and the possibilities of communication through open-ended abstract visual propositions.

Lubos Culen Curator Vernon Public Art Gallery

5

POV, 2014, acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 48 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Bryan Ryley in discussion with Lubos Culen

LC: It has been thirteen years since we had a conversation regarding painting in general and your studio practice. The exhibition entitled SALTUS was exhibited in the VPAG in 2007 – the word references a break in the continuity of a sequence, or an omission of a necessary step in a logical argument. How did the word ‘saltus’ relate to that exhibition?

BR: That is a good question. How ‘saltus’ referred to that exhibition… well, in my practice an important aspect of the journey is for me to put hurdles in front of my way. There are two ways to do hurdles: you can put a hurdle in front of you, or you can take something away that you would later rely on. The reason for hurdles is to force oneself to find solutions to problems or difficulties or to create new visions. I am unable, really, to imagine a direction for artwork; I am much more a person that follows the artwork rather than leads it. When I was younger, as a painting student I was asked to paint images of things and could always do that, fair enough, but it was not interesting. Aspects of making the painting along the way were the little things I noticed.

The end image, no matter what the nuance or extra special attention one could give it, did not satisfy me.

In other words, was the result too predictable?

Yes, it was a disappointment because of its predictability.

This exhibition is entitled MORNING BRIEFING and consists of large paintings complemented with smaller paintings on paper; can you comment on the conceptual link between the title and the exhibition?

‘Morning Briefing’ is the name of a painting in the exhibition and is positioned probably mid-way through quite a heavy body of studio activity… from late 2018 and early 2019. In these last several years, there has been so much media information about what is going on, what is happening in the world and we can access that information quickly. I would always check my New York Times feed and get the ‘morning briefings’. As we all know, these mornings have been full of surprises, so that is where the title comes from.

Much has evolved over the thirteen years since your exhibition at the VPAG. For example, you have

7

retired from your professional teaching practice to assume a full time studio practice. Has this move influenced your mode of operation in your studio practice?

No. It has given me less distractions, for sure, and I suppose more time in the studio, but I have always spent a lot of time in the studio at any rate. What it has done, I should say, is afforded me a greater opportunity to interact with my family. Many of the issues that are in the recent work are about social interaction, world interactions, human interactions; I would say that has been the great influence.

Has the new routines of family life allowed for a new focus/concentration in studio time?

They have allowed a focus; one of the things I am happy about is learning from my grandchildren.

A painting in this exhibition is called WORKERMAN. ‘Workerman’ is my grand son’s name for those who are out working with shovels and picks, doing construction, who drive trucks, fire engines and all those things… and he gave me a focus to examine that, those particular mechanisms in our society.

Can we look back at how your creative practice has evolved – an overview from your time as a student and what your studio practice has evolved into?

I started painting when I was about eleven years of age with an elderly painter who was a part of the Blue Ryder group…

Was that the artist that you mixed the paint for?

Yes, I used to mix his paint and then would have to copy the painting he had just done. He would coach me on the stages of the development of the painting. And then we moved from that community after I spent about two years with him. I then finished high school and went to university where again I went into painting classes. Here I found I had been doing a lot of painting that my classmates had not, so I moved to printmaking. Printmaking methodologies are really very constructive; you have to prepare for your stages of image development, and you use a press to transfer effects onto a support. So you are putting it through processes that are somewhat out of your reach, controlled by dynamics beyond your hand. I found that very liberating.

I found printmaking to be very constrictive... it was not the right speed for my sensibility…

8

That is interesting. However I did not hang in the printmaking room too long before I discovered collage; collage moves things along beautifully. You can alter the field of vision instantly with something placed on top of something else. That has really been a dynamic for me through my whole practice. I remember being elated in finding out that in Oriental philosophies negation was in many ways more profound than additive processes. To negate something is to remove it from its ability to have an influence on something; that became one of the hurdles, or strategies I put in front of myself, to negate a practice let’s say, or negate a colour, negate a movement of some sort in a work.

Can we talk about how you have been identifying your subject matter? You partially covered that when you are observing your grandchildren and what they observe…

Right. For the most part, what I recognize, or identify, there are several things: one of them I would say is spatial. To me the act of making a painting is the act of relationships for better or worse. If we go back to my university days, one thing I learned from Paul Klee, the Swiss artist, is that all paintings have solids, lines, and atmospheres. And the inclusion of the word ‘atmospheres’ was something you did not hear in North America at that time. Everything was sort of cut into black and white, or a line and a solid. They would forget to throw in the atmosphere. It kind of liberated me. I thought, OK yes, that is the conditional aspect that the lines and solids find themselves in, the atmosphere. The figure to the ground. It does not have to be a physical atmosphere, it could be a political atmosphere, it could be an emotional atmosphere, whatever. So, of course, it led to ideas of triads and the influence of three things on something rather than just two things on something. And what happens is that complexity becomes compounded with just this awareness of an atmosphere. So, atmosphere to me is in many ways the engine of the painting.

And if I step back from it, the process, I realize it is my understanding of the use of the physical properties of paint I have come to rely on to help me explore language, to examine atmospheres and relationships, and it is amazing what breadth there is when you give yourself up to it.

So, when we talk about your paintings, do you understand them as spaces?

They are always spatial, yes… They are kind of a tight space and yet, it is extremely deep as well.

Yes, it was an advantage that I was present during the photo documentation of the paintings and the works on paper to see how dense they were. Another discovery was also the fact that the lens captured the yellow pushing through the layer of black paint on top of it…

9

Diving Board, 2013, acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 54 in, photo: Bryan Ryley

It is true, is it not? When Yuri [the photographer] positioned that dark painting entitled DOGZ, he mentioned that it is so dark, but as he was working, he said “Look at the amount of yellow that is in it underneath the black.” You know, it is interesting that you used the word ‘dense’. That compression, packing it, is important to me for some reason; it is like a pressure cooker.

And as you mentioned, an atmosphere which can be felt…

Good, I am glad it comes across…

Could you comment on your time as an educator and what was the main message you wanted the students to take away?

Yes, I loved teaching and to me it was an opportunity to learn from other people. I learned so much from students, I learned from you, your sense about the angst of the paint. It is such a joy to see paint in different people’s hands driven by the context of their own lives and see where it will go. I guess if I wanted to impart anything to my students, it was: this is a phenomenal journey and be open to it, just be open, for god’s sake, be open. You are not wrong, you never are, but you can lie to yourself and that is the worst thing you can do. If they can get that, then my job is done We are already two decades into the 21st century and art history and art theories are evolving; do you think new ideas continue to contribute to the understanding and deconstruction of much of the 20th century understanding of art in general?

When you finished that sentence, your question with the word ‘general’, I feel it will be a long time before we have a general understanding of what it is that art is all about and what it delivers.

In a more tolerant, in a more equitable and fair world, not just our society, all societies, we will began to understand what art is all about. Art is really about the possibility of feeling that something has been touched. The physical world is something we live in but we rarely and barely touch it, we do not touch it with our hearts as much as we could. And art talks about that, it talks about the social constructs. It talks about the dynamics of living and I think that what it is trying to say is that we all have a fair place in this world, we all have a fair dynamic in this world. There are reasons that things exist, let’s examine them, let’s look at them, experience them and move on with this in our lives. You might say it is the felt existence of an unidentifiable reality. Painting is interesting because it does not change. If I make a painting, it stays the way I made it and that is one of its great, great powers. Film does not do that, dance does not do that, music does not

11

do that. Painting is really the only thing that does that. Even sculpture in many ways does not have the advantages that painting does. Sculpture has to be perceived in 360 degrees; so, it is shifting in perception as one goes around that. Painting does not let you shift your perception; the darn thing stares you in the face. It has an influence on you, but a lot of people cannot take that a painting has an influence on you. And that is what they really need to learn from art; it has an influence on you. It has a reason to be there. Open yourself up to it and you will benefit, period. And that in itself is a lesson to open oneself up to other people, to other ideas, to other things that occur in life, and learn from them.

Now, when you have the opportunity of a full time practice after teaching for more than three decades, what insights have emerged regarding your discipline and practice? You know, things like proclamations that ‘painting is dead’ came to be untrue…

You know, it is a good thing that they said painting was dead because a lot of people quit painting that should not have been painting. This is a little cynical, but what happened was a lot of people who were committed to painting hung in there and there were some interesting developments that occurred out of that. Again, that is the cycle, the mechanism, that is the pendulum.

That is why it was so nice to see people like Julian Schnabel in the eighties just doing it. The same goes for women artists. Who comes to mind is Cecily Brown, whose painting just blow my mind; it is so pure non-objective, but invoking and inspiring…

Pure expression, heartfelt…

One can understand painting as evolving over this time as well. The boundaries and complexities of the vocabulary of painting continues to surprise and challenge the viewer. You have invented different ways of paint application and devised methodologies which can be understood as outside of the vocabulary of the painting discipline… Could you comment on that?

Likely you are referencing the collage aspect of my painting practice, the application of tarps and use of long squeegees; processes somewhat mechanical. If we take a squeegee for example, it is just the change in scale of a tool. It is no different than a point of a pencil; it is just that it is stretched out and you can move it with your whole body… as Klee said, a line is just a dot taken for a walk, well, the same with the squeegee and paint; you are making a shape with the use of this tool. With this I was able to feel time being put into paintings.

12

So, a vectorial quality of a mark which has beginning, direction, duration…

Yes, absolutely. Within this, as well, in the glimpses that come between the shapes that the squeegee makes, one perceives spatially, one feels a depth, due to the layering. And so, a different kind of time is captured by the process, a spatial time. Not a duration time, but a container time somehow. That tool brings this alive for me…

Bryan, you have returned to collage in these works; it is a methodology that you have been focused on over the years. Can you comment on your decision to use the commercially used tarpaulins?

The used tarpaulins have already a layer of history of their own use, now they are used as collage elements in new works; what is it that attracts you to these particular materials?

Yes, tarps have always been of interest to me. I made a large painting, a 7 foot by 10 foot canvas.

On the left side of the painting, probably for eighteen inches, is a dark broody kind of passage, and then for 7 or 8 feet of the painting there is a big white field with a grid of white dots. And on the far right of the painting for about eighteen inches is a slice of old tarp glued to the surface.

What the painting referenced for me was a recollection of my father, of my time with him. This section was a part of the tarp that we used to put on our boat when we went fishing. It is why I pasted the tarp on the canvas, as a symbolic gesture of putting Dad into the painting. Visually and symbolically it was right and that was kind of the beginning of it. Shortly after that Margaret and I went to Burma and spent three weeks there. When we came back I had the feeling when I started to work again in the studio that I needed to throw a hurdle in my way once again and I tore more canvas and applied it. I was smitten with the tarp, by its beauty, the surface and scars left by its utilitarian history. I soon made the connection that the application and the shapes of the tarps could symbolically reference the Burmese people we had met, people aware of their condition of being treated as simply utilitarian objects by a ruling elite. You can really feel the history in these individuals, their culture which they carry within them, they are embedded in it; a kind people, rich in feeling and empathy. So anyway, that started the tarps and the collage goes way back and again, it is another hurdle. Instead of trying to paint a shape, it was more profound to cut a shape…

As you mentioned, used tarps have their own history of use and now they are used as collage elements in your work. You already cover partially the question I wanted to ask: what is it that attracts you to this particular material? You mentioned its history, invocation of certain feelings, memory…

13

DOGZ, 2017, acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 48 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

The other big thing that is really important is that the piece of canvas that was torn or cut is autonomous. It always strikes me as it is its own self and I love that about it. It does not have to be in the service of something else, yet it can be while not losing its own sense of self. This is the major thing I get from their use, it is their presence.

The title of the exhibition, MORNING BRIEFING, and the painting with the same title, express something ominous, as if waiting for something that has transpired or is expected to take place; can you offer an insight into your reading of the expression?

It is partly a daily ritual of mine, the ‘morning briefing’, to check out structural goings on in the world on a daily basis. And that is not new to me, I have done that all my life. In painting, in my body of work and what I work on and work towards is the examination of structural underpinnings of things. And those things are not just physical, they are societal, they are emotional, they are private, they are public… So, the Morning Briefing painting… one of the things I enjoy about this painting is that there is an object that looks like a fried egg stuck on the side of a person’s head.

This is how it feels sometimes, that there has been a fried egg thrown in your face. It is tough for whomever this would happen to. Yet, at the same time, around the head in the painting are black shapes that look like clouds, but they are black and the whole sky is black. How they came about, was that I had a bucket of paint that was almost dry, yet not dry enough that it would not attach to something. I poured. I think there are four shapes around this head, thinking at the time it was the kind of crap that was in the sky, in the atmosphere. I think we have all felt something like this about these morning briefings; about the behaviours of some of the people we read about, about the goings on around us. It was kind of a joke, but at the same time pertinent. Then I painted them all uniform black, the sky and the crap were all embedded together.

Bryan, speaking of this, can you comment on how you structure your paintings and what is spontaneous in the application; so there is a reciprocal process, I believe, of reacting to what is on canvas and inevitably making a decision one way or the other.

Yes, every piece of work is triggered by the first act, and the first act is attempting to be unpredictable. I can take a long time to start a painting because I do not want to get caught up in habits. If I start the painting in a way that is familiar to me, I will more likely go down a familiar path with the painting, and I am not interested in doing so. I am way more interested in the future than I am in the past. I am interested too in what kind of emotional journeys and places I can yet experience. One way I may start a painting, and this came from the time I was in graduate school… I would leave my home in Brooklyn on the subway to Pratt Institute where I

15

was doing my Master’s work and I found I had gotten quite depressed after being there for couple of months and doing work, and I was at a loss. I remember on the way to school picking up some sticks, four or five sticks. I walked into my studio and I threw them on the canvas that was on the ground. The canvas was on the ground because it was the biggest space I had since it would not fit on the wall, so I worked on the ground. I was determined that wherever those sticks came to rest would be the start of that painting. I was trying to open myself up to chance and open myself up for greater possibilities than my mind was capable of coming up with. So, that has always been the practice. I mean I will stand ten feet from the paintings and just throw paint at it just to get it going, the initial mark which you might have to later negate.

Well, it is a reciprocal process. The nice thing about painting is that you can always paint over something, but it is inevitable that one makes decisions on the way that one regrets later… For the most part your artwork is non-representational, yet the titles reference personages, things, places, actions, or various phenomena; I am always trying to connect the images with the paintings’ titles; how and at what point do you decide the paintings’ titles?

Always after the painting is done.

Yes? Why is that?

Well, it is kind of like representation as we spoke about earlier. I do not want to have a title and then try to represent it.

It is interesting, because in my previous practice I would have a title or a theme and I would work toward it, try to identify signifiers to create a narrative, however open ended…

You had a target and you went after it, you took things from different sources or whatever, to get there.

So how do you decide how to title your paintings? Is it based on your associations or experiences?

It is based on associations that come out of the painting. It is also based on the contextual journey I am living, or on; I think that is the best way to say it. These two paintings I am looking at here, they reference feelings. There are several things: climate change, which is kind of weird to say in a way because it always was a taboo in the world of art to reference current issues in case you are labelled with climbing on a band wagon. That steers a lot of people away from places that they 16

would be well advised to go. This painting here is called SOOT, the yellow and black. It is kind of a dirty looking painting which is intentional. It could be called Big Smoke. It has a chimney shape in it and a ‘sooty’ atmosphere, as if we were in a coal-burning mode. There is a figure standing behind the chimney, or it could be a figure standing behind a wall looking out at us. To the left of the chimney one perceives a large face; you can see the nose and mouth and eye; it could be a Marilyn Monroe archetype. On the far left in a big triangular shape, in the yellow, is a cow’s head.

It reminds me of the Jewish painter… You are going to have to help me out here. With the figures flying in the air.

Marc Chagall?

In one particular painting of his there is a head of a cow that takes up maybe a quarter of the painting; this suggests that form. This references for me my grandkids and the illustrated books we have been reading. The scale of shapes on a page, the implied animal. Then I see in here [in the painting] a mother and child on the far left. This is a part of my experience of the last four years. And I have always believed that my experience is everybody’s experience. You know, as foolish as it can sound, I still believe it. I think your experience is the same as my experience.

Well, I can relate to it; it is about the process of art making. ‘Art’ is an activity regardless of the result…

The large painting behind you, the Pond. It is called Pond, but I think it should be called ponding.

Partly, in a way, we are going back to the titles. It is about pondering, it suggests a reflection in water thus the reference to ‘pond’. It is for me about ‘pondering,’ when you face complexities which appear to be dilemmas, yet probably are not, and you ponder.

In your exhibition statement you state that the “series of paintings [were] constructed around emotional responses to the social climate of late 2018 and early 2019.” Could you please comment what were you reacting to and how it influenced your creative process?

Well, again, the ‘morning briefing’, the notion of things… I guess I can frame it this way: the climate, the atmosphere of the social and physical climate in 2018/2019, at the time I was writing it and creating the body of work, was a charged atmosphere throughout the world, it seemed.

There were catastrophes on many fronts, upheavals in many places, and shifts in social constructs.

It seemed at the time as now that this is at an increased rate and I just do not know if this is just a fact that we are hearing about it, or that we have access to it as ‘here and now’.

17

DUCK , 2019, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 28 x 12, paper size: 30 x 22 in photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Maybe that includes ‘alternative facts’…

Well, it is that too and we are all a little bit hyper vigilant, asking if it is true or not true, or what caused this. I am reading a great book and it has become a little bit of a bible for me; it is entitled “Thinking, Fast and Slow” written by Daniel Kahneman who is a psychologist. He posits that our brains works on what he breaks down into two systems; System one and System two. System one being our habitual, biased and immediate response to things. And really, his book is about decision-making, all pertinent to a painter, pertinent to anybody. System two, he basically calls it ‘yourself’, your innate self. Intuition, you would think would be a part of the innate self; not necessarily in his mind. Intuition can be governed or controlled by System one where one’s ’rush to judgment’ resides… System two is supposed to be somewhat suspicious of System one. System one does not care to be suspicious of anything; it just reacts. So, that leads me to. . . I can layer it a bit. When I was maybe about twelve years of age, my father said to me: “It is a good idea to have a healthy disregard for everything.” And in asking him what he meant about that… Basically he said it is wise to be a little suspicious of your immediate response to things. Better to check them out, check out your first response, to look at how you are responding, that things can perhaps be about something else. He was pointing out that there is a shifting scale of things that are multidimensional. Thus what we think we see in a painting can be fleeting and may become something else. What we think is a major driver in a painting shifts when we look at another entity in the painting. What we thought was the major driver falls into the background, its role altered, the hierarchy shifted. What we are perceiving or viewing at any moment becomes the new major driver of thought and response, shifting all the time as one views different entities. And that is what I think is going on in life all the time. Paintings to me cannot be static; they do not reflect anything properly if they are static. You can only get close to static. This was and is my problem with Representational painting, it forgoes this basic fact of perception.

Interesting thoughts. I wanted to ask you about the works on paper that are a part of the exhibition. Could you comment on what inspired you to paint a body of smaller works? What was the concept?

They come out of the tarp paintings. When I am working on a body of work I typically start on paper and then go to canvas and then back to paper and back to canvas. Those works, ten paintings on paper, were done one after the other over a period of probably five days. They basically represent a conversation between two people. Tarp fragments are embedded into darker areas, or they may be clean fresh fragments on top. In some the tarp aspect is a deep space, other times it feels frontal. The works are about the rich complex journey discussions going on between two people

19

can offer. Embedded as a collage tool are photographs of people that are of interest to me. One of them is Willem De Kooning. There is the shoulder and arm and a part of the left leg and foot of Robert Rauschenberg in another one. There is Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionist. There is also a list I came across; it could have been at a garage sale or in a box of discarded items. It is a list a seamstress has written on what she had to do in repairing something. Those things are embedded in the discussion between these two figures, or at least in our reading of the piece we are directed by its context.

How about the larger paintings? Could you comment on the source concepts?

Larger paintings are that too; they are the same desire for dialogue. Often, there is not a lot of sound in the dialogue. It is almost as if I am trying to make a quiet dialogue, yet they are quite brash in some way. So there is stress between that…

Well, definitely. It is how they are structured; it is pretty intense and austere. There is that tension…

That tension is important for me; without it, it is not getting there…

So the tension becomes the atmosphere…

One thing that I find of interest is that as human beings we are able to do what Castaneda referenced and that is to shift our assemblage point. We can shift our point of view, the place we gather our information from when we are looking at something, and adopt a different point of view. That is a great thing to do when you are standing in front of a painting; how am I looking at this? Maybe if I looked at it in a different way, it would become a different thing and that actually happens. It enriches one’s depth or journey within the experience. This goes back to a question you asked regarding what I would like to impart to my students and it is just that, the ability to shift one’s assemblage point, to go beyond one’s usual perceptual position. Go somewhere with it. That is what the dots in the painting [CLEARCUT, 2019, acrylic and collage on canvas, 64 x 54 in], are trying to pull into view. If you hang in there, on those places, those dots, other things will start to have their own dance and their own life. They will emerge and carry you further.

Do you have any additional thoughts about this particular body of work?

One thing I will say about the painting FANMAN, is that I started to use the fan mechanism as a tool to reference climate change. FANMAN is a painting that emerged out of a different methodology.

Instead of moving the squeegee across the surface, I decided to go around the circumference with 20

one end of the squeegee in the centre of the canvas. This is not entirely new for me, but I began to regard it in a different light. It became to mean something different to me. In FANMAN, I started to see this as representing our industrial age, representing those individuals, the culture and society built in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and the early part of the twentieth century. They created the machinery that we live by. In so doing they set the stage we have reaped the benefits of, and now are reaping the downside of. I saw an image of the polar vortex, the wind that is around both the Arctic and Antarctic poles. While listening to a scientist on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks describe how the polar vortex is now sending cold fingers of air south, while warming fingers are moving north up into it causing it break down, I started to think and see that this fan mechanism has a representative feeling about this. It carries with it a spinning concentric focus while at the same time a sense of expanding outwards. There is compression there, a yin/yang push-and-pull that feels right. No longer across the surface, it is now going into the surface and out; becoming more of a breathing rhythm, a mechanism I think I will be exploring more of down the road.

That is actually what I wanted to ask. What is your direction for the future?

I would like the paintings to be more minimal, but at the same time I am interested in pushing them in some maximal way; so there is this push-and-pull, the polarities I am working with. I am really trying to be more courageous. It is really easy to put paint on the surface and move it around and manipulate it and it becomes something. It is another thing to put paint on the surface and leave it alone. It is a very interesting concept and can really talk to you, letting you know that it has limits. It has identity. And challenging you to know how much you are going to recognize somebody else’s identity and live with it. That is where I am at… you know, you were talking earlier about people coming and being afraid of painting, being afraid of art. It is good in some way because art is a weapon in some way; I think it is, all art is. I think the Sunday painter who does a painting of a landscape is really saying that this is the world I like, this is the world I am giving recognition to and I am constructing it to give recognition to it. So this is a view of the world I wish to secure and put back out in the world to compete with all the other views that are out there, to give it a place, to give it some power. I mean it is an extreme, but we are all trying to say something. I have always loved looking at art because it offers an extended world experience. That is why I keep making paintings, I suppose. I have never really been concerned if anybody sees them, somehow that has never been an objective of mine. The intent has always been to extend my own awareness, to enrich my understanding. Yet it is absolutely fascinating to come across one of these paintings in another environment. It is refreshing to know they continue to offer extended glimpses into this rich and varied reality we call life. Perhaps this is why we do it?

Artist’s studio, Vernon, BC, February 5, 2020 21

Gestalt 1 (Headfootleg), 2019, acrylic and collage on paper, image: 28 x 12 in, paper: 30 x 22 in

photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Morning Briefing, Exhibition Statement MORNING BRIEFING is a series of paintings constructed around emotional responses to the social climate of late 2018 and early 2019. They are really gestalts of feelings and forms, gatherings of emotions and structures, physical weights and surfaces that have been personally felt, driven by the social and political climate of these times.

Yet, as always, they are not just this.

The language of painting is a complex and demanding exercise. As a painter I come out of a side of Abstract Expressionism, whose aspects are rooted in post-war Cubism and Dada, where expression challenged visual form and social context. Then, as now, the social climate was in turmoil. Previous visual languages no longer served the emotive content of the times. Simple pictures, direct uncomplicated depictions, seemed out of step with the myriad complexities of emotions found in society at large. New expressive languages developed that broke down and reconstructed form, aimed at exposing the transient and difficult social contexts of life at the time. It seems we are here again.

Several years back I began using discarded canvas tarpaulins, cut into shapes and collaged to the paintings surface. I did so to upend my usual habits of form construction, essentially to outsmart my habits. I was attracted to the ‘autonomous’ character of the material, to the marks, stains and corruptions over the surface of these canvas remnants. I realized that regardless of how these shapes helped construct the overall formal narrative they maintained their ‘autonomy’ from the story line that was emerging. This felt essential. Something discordant and out of step with the perceived narrative had inserted itself giving cause to consider a compounding number of other responses to the painting. Nothing simple, nothing secure, seemed to be implied.

MORNING BRIEFING is intended to push this further. More explicit in its figurative construct. Heads and shoulders built out of remnants, atmospheres poured out of buckets of paint, moods created through a persistent black/grey/white/ochre palette. Cartoons are married to cubist tropes, new to old language, comfortable yet discordant, an ongoing challenge in the balance between simplicity and complexity.

This is a persistent feeling. For me a reflection of the challenge we face in these transient times.

Bryan Ryley

23

morning briefing images of works in the series

25

Council (11th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Spring Thaw (20th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Anxious Man (15th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Masters of War (18th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Witbis (19th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Clive (17th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Seamstress (12th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

His Master’s Voice (13th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Modern England (14th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Blemish (16th & Main), 2015, acrylic and collage on paper, image size: 20 x 16, paper size: 30 x 22 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Morning Briefing, 2019, acrylic and collage on canvas, 48 x 40 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Paperbag, 2019, acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 48 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

COLONYMAN, 2019, acrylic and collage on canvas, 72 x 60 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

FANMAN, 2019, acrylic and collage on canvas, 72 x 60 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

WORKERMAN, 2019, acrylic and collage on canvas, 72 x 60 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

POND, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 84 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

CABIN, 2020, acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 48 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Soot, 2020, acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 54 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Clearcut, 2020, acrylic and collage on canvas, 60 x 54 in, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections

Bryan Ryley short biography Educated in New York, Bryan Ryley holds a Master of Fine Arts (Honors) 1977, from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honors) 1974 from the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC and was one of the first participants and seminar leader in the Graduate program at the Whitney Museum, New York in 1976/77. On his return to Canada he participated in the renowned workshops at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan (1979/80/81) working with John Elderfield, Friedl Dzubas, and Stanley Boxer Ryley exhibits in both Canada and The United States. His work is found in numerous private and public collections, including: Government of Canada, Canadian Consulate, Paris, France; The Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, Ontario; British Columbia Art Collection, Victoria, BC; Kelowna Public Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC; Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, BC; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York; Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconson; and numerous corporate collections including Canadian Pacific, SunLife Financial, IBM Canada, Brookfield Properties/bcIMC Realty, Encana, Cenovus, Petro Canada, Shell, Nordstrom and others. exhibitions 2020 MORNING BRIEFING, Vernon Public Art Gallery, BC, solo

2019 RUMINATIONS, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo 2017

THE BIG PICTURE, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, curated by Liz Wylie, group

2015

TRIUMPH, Triumph Coffee, Vernon, BC, solo

2014

CITIZENS, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo

2014

THE MATERIAL FORM: CONTEMPORARY ABSTRACT PAINTING, Gallery Jones, Vancouver, BC, group

2014 OKANAGAN ARTISTS IN THEIR STUDIOS, Guest curated by Patricia Ainsley, Penticton Art

Gallery, Penticton, BC, group

64

2013 ongoing FREEZ-UP AND BREAK-UP, Sun Life Place, Edmonton, AB, solo

Permanent Installation commissioned for the lobby of Sun Life Place, Edmonton, AB, solo 2013

COLOUR ASIDE, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo

2012

ART TORONTO, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Toronto, ON, group

2012

GALLERY ARTISTS, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, group

2011

bryan Ryley: Selected Paintings, Gallery Jones, Vancouver, BC, solo

2011

THE POINT IS: Pierre Coupey, Landon MacKenzie, Martin Pearce, Bernadette Phan, Bryan Ryley, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, group

2011

END OF SUMMER, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, group

2010

Constructions of Identity, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, group Recent additions to the Permanent Collection of the Kelowna Art Gallery. Exhibition included seven works on paper from the 2005 Four Corners Series. Catalogue published.

2010

INTERMITTENT ENTROPY: New Paintings & Works on Paper, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo

2009

SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, solo Catalogue published, curated by Liz Wylie

2009

FREE RADICALS: New Paintings & Works on Paper, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo

2008

Straight Forward, SOPA Fine Arts, Kelowna, BC, group

2007

Here and There II: Ryley and Johnston, FINA Gallery, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, BC, joint

2007

SALTUS, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, BC, solo Catalogue published

65

2007

Upsetting the Clan, SOPA Fine Arts, Kelowna, BC, solo

2006 Seville and Others: New Paintings, SOPA Fine Arts, Kelowna, BC, solo 2005

4 CORNERS : New Paintings and Drawings, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo

2004

GRIDS, FINA Gallery, Okanagan University College, Kelowna, BC, solo

2004

A Child of God, Alternator Gallery, Kelowna, BC, solo

2003

RED, WHITE & BLUE, Ballard Lederer Gallery, Vancouver, BC, solo Exhibition of cloud paintings created in response to 9/11

2001

Illumine: Paintings and Sculpture, Ballard Lederer Gallery, Vancouver, BC, solo Inaugural exhibition and opening of Arthur Erickson’s ‘Waterfall Building’

2001

Recent Paintings, Headbones Gallery, Vernon, BC, solo

2000

Grids: Recent Works, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo

1998

Heaven and Earth: New Paintings & Drawings, Vernon Public Art Gallery/Paul Kuhn Gallery, Vernon, BC/Calgary, AB, solo

1996

Weather and Tools, Headbones Gallery, Vernon, BC, solo

1996

Raven Drawings - for “Sylvia”, Montgomery Fine Arts, Vancouver, BC, solo

1996

Bury the Abstract Expressionists, Vernon Public Art Gallery/Paul Kuhn Gallery, Vernon, BC/Calgary, AB, solo

1995/94 Recent Paintings and Drawings, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo 1993

Targets, Xerox BC Open, Predator Ridge Golf Resort, Vernon, BC , solo

1993

Rambling Eye: Drawings 1985-1992, Kelowna Public Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, solo Catalogue published

66

1992

Legacy - Public Sculpture Commission, Legacy - Public Sculpture Commission , Vernon, BC, solo

1991

Recent Sculpture and Drawings, Szombathy/Charlton, Vernon, BC, solo

1991

Roosters - Vancouver Jazz Festival, Alma Street Cafe, Vancouver, BC, solo

1990

Platforms: New Paintings and Drawings. Kanoui Forbes Gallery, New York, NY, solo

1989

Stock Exchange, Lakewood Art Gallery, Vernon, BC, Experimental exhibition running 48 hrs, solo

1988

New Paintings, Grand Forks Art Gallery, Grand Forks, BC, solo

1987/86/85/84 Recent Paintings and Drawings, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, solo 1986

Terrain, Kelowna Public Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, solo

1984

Dog Town Common, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, BC, solo

1982/81 Paintings and Drawings, Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art, Inc., Vancouver, BC, solo 1979

Emma Lake Paintings, Kelowna Public Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, solo Paintings from workshop with John Elderfield and Friedl Dzubas

1978

Fields and Trajectories, Shafter Gallery, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, solo, MFA Graduating Exhibition

1977

Shifting Fields, Canadian Consulate Gallery, New York, NY, solo

1999

Ryley and Craig: Shots at the Self, Alternator Gallery, Kelowna, BC, joint exhibition

1993

Ryley and Alcock: Recent Sculpture, Szombathy Charlton, Vernon, BC, joint exhibition

67

1990

Ryley and Suarez: Cartoons and Boxes, Art Gallery of the South Okanagan, Penticton, BC, joint exhibition, curated by Jane Ritchie

2009

META, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, group

2008

NEXUS: Histories & Communities, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, group Curated by Liz Wylie

2007

Abstract (B&W), The Drawers/Headbones Gallery, Toronto, ON, group

2007

New Colour, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, group

2006

First Half: New Work, FINA Gallery, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, BC, group

2006

SOPA Gallery Inaugural Exhibition, SOPA Gallery, Kelowna, BC, group

2006

The Drawers Inaugural Exhibition, The Drawers/Headbones Gallery, Toronto, ON, group

2006

GROUP New paintings and drawings, Elins Eaglesmith Gallery, San Francisco, CA, group

2006

Gallery Artists, Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, BC, group

2005

Inspired By The Land, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, BC, group

2004

Winter Exhibition, Gallery Odin, Vernon, BC, group

2004

Faculty Exchange, University of Washington, Pullman, Washington, group

2003

Defining Abstraction, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, BC, group

2002

Selections, Ballard Lederer Gallery, Vancouver, BC, group

2002

Faculty Exchange, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, group 68

2002

ART BANK - 30th Anniversary Exhibition, Art Bank, Ottawa, ON, group Government of Canada Public Art Collection Exhibition

2001

TRANSlinear: Contemporary Painting in Canada, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, group Jointly curated by MacMaster University and Kelowna Art Gallery

2001

Creative Voice, Art Gallery of the South Okanagan, Penticton, BC, group Curated by Gary Pearson

2001

New Abstraction, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, group

2000

Collections, Jan Ballard Gallery, Vancouver, BC, group

2000

GROUP Four - Hartman, Molinari, Rogers, Ryley, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, group

1999

GROUP New Paper Works, Jan Ballard Gallery, Vancouver, BC, group

1999

Headbones Inaugural, Headbones Gallery, Vernon, BC, group

1998

Approaching Abstraction, Art Gallery of the South Okanagan, Penticton, BC, group Curated by Roger Boulet

1998

Selections from the Permanent Collection, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, group

1997

Visuals from Audibles, Headbones Gallery, Vernon, BC, group

1997

Works on Paper, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, group

1996/97/99 North Okanagan Juried Exhibition, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon,

BC, group 1996/98 Satyrykon, Legnica, Poland, group

69

1996

Stepping Stones: Inaugural Exhibition, Kelowna Public Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, group

1995

Defining Feminism, Headbones Gallery, Vernon, BC, group

1995/96/97/98 Small Matters, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, BC, group 1994

Alumni International, Shafter Gallery, Pratt Institute, New York, NY, group

1993

Alumni International, Manhattan Gallery, Pratt Institute, New York, NY, group

1993

Drawings, Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, AB, group

1992

New Acquisitions, Petro Canada Fine Arts Gallery, Calgary, AB

1991

Okanagan Open Juried Show, Kelowna Public Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC, group

1991

Studio Watch, Grand Forks Public Art Gallery, Grand Forks, BC, group

1990

Diversity, Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, BC, group

1990

Maskrap, Okanagan Artists Alternative Juried Show, Kelowna, BC, group

1989

Works on Paper, Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, AB, group

1982

New Additions, Judith Selkowitz Fine Art, New York, NY, group

1981

Emma Lake Artists, Edmonton Art Gallery (traveling), Edmonton, AB, group

1980

Young Talent, Russell Sage Gallery, Troy, NY, group

1977

5th International New York Invitational / Canadian Representative United Nations, Seagram Building, New York, NY, group Chosen to represent Canada - curated by Andre Emmerich

1977

Ford Foundation Recipient Exhibition, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, group

70

bryan ryley | morning briefing

vernon public art gallery vernon, british columbia canada www.vernonpublicartgallery.com

BRYAN RYLEY MORNING BRIEFING