Ryan McGinness "Black Holes"
Phillips, de Pury & Company
This event has ended.
Phillips de Pury & Company announces "Black Holes", a selling exhibition of 24 selected works from the "Black Holes" series by the contemporary art star, Ryan McGinness. In true McGinness style, the show will include a spectacular, site-specific black light installation showcasing ten unique works at our 450 West 15th Street location overlooking the High Line. The exhibition will also include edition works sparkled throughout our Chelsea gallery. The 24 works present a psychedelic quality and possess visual manifestations of inner and outer space combined with lace-like über fanciness. The "Black Holes" series was executed from 2004 to 2010; McGinness has completed the series. Phillips de Pury & Company is honored to exhibit the final chapter.
"Black Holes" employs overlapping colorful arabesque forms serving as symbolic representations of portals to an infinite world. The round canvases and wood panels comprise layers of screen printed concentric and symmetrical “event horizons,” which McGinness defines as the “point in space-time before which everything disappears into the black hole”. This creates a framing device which forces the radiating symmetry back into the picture plane. The complex nature of the works leads the viewer into multi-dimensional universes and realities.
For viewing along the gallery windows of the High Line, McGinness created site-specific flourishes of fluorescent vinyl for the works, which explode from behind the paintings, illuminating the paintings while black lit from inside the gallery. The effect creates a dynamic color spectrum experience fully understood in person, an illumination experienced and accentuated by the gallery’s interior and the High Line’s exterior environment. The works become part of a larger in situ installation that breathe atmospheric life and meaning transcending from the gallery into the world beyond.
In the “black on black” works, the artist departs from color and employs gradations of black and gray. Thematically these works align with McGinness’s acute sense of inner and outer space and his ingenuity in capturing an idea and releasing it onto the painting. The symbolic aesthetic presented in this series is connected to religious practices and ideas in theoretical physics. Overall, the artist is interested in the perceived value of forms in order to communicate personal expressions.
Each Black Hole undergoes a detailed process of painstaking precision and alignment that merges several directions of contemporary art. The work references pop culture and Andy Warhol’s practice of creating screen printed paintings. However McGinness’s process is defined by making hand drawings first, and evolving them into iconic forms influenced by his experience as a graphic designer. His style is marked by the distinctive use of a visual language rooted in public signage, commercial logos, and contemporary iconography.
Ryan McGinness was born in Virginia Beach and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in art and graphic design.
[Image: Ryan McGinness "Black Hole" (2007) 12.3 in.]
Media
Schedule
from December 23, 2010 to March 08, 2011