Cutting Corners and Other Weird Torture
New Work by Ryan Crowley
On view in conjunction with Bushwick Open Studios

September 22nd: 7-10pm
September 23rd - 24th: 11am-7pm

Wayfarers is pleased to present Cutting Corners and Other Weird Torture, a solo exhibition of Wayfarers' Summer Artist in Residence, Ryan Crowley, on view from September 22nd through the 24th.

For Crowley's exhibition, he transforms the gallery into a series of dense sculptural installations that tell the stories of their own making. Favoring a blunt and direct handling of materials like chewing gum, plaster and plywood, Crowley’s idiosyncratic construction process conjures an attitude of resourceful urgency. Chairs become work surfaces, walls become chambers and a deconstructed table clings to the wall like a giant insect. These “psychic still lifes” take claim of the wall, colonize the windows, or occupy the floor, but each becomes a dynamic composition of representational and abstract parts in constant conversation. There are oversized noses, soft drink cups, piles of tiny spaghetti and cordless drills made of stone, all cohabitating with equally complex, but less recognizable forms.

In spirit they call to mind Philip Guston’s studio paintings: smart, funny and slightly neurotic expeditions through the artist’s mind at work. In terms of their scale shifts, sober undertones and celebrated clutter, they reveal a studio practice steeped in revisions and formal tectonics. Playing between the ruined and the rebuilt, these sculptures have a recycled and mosaic quality that implies a previous and unknown function.

Ryan Crowley (b. 1983) Boston, MA, lives and works in Austin, TX. Recent exhibition venues include 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA and Coustof Waxman, NY, NY.