NYAB Event - Ryan Mrozowski “Open, Other, End”

Ryan Mrozowski “Open, Other, End”

On Stellar Rays

This event has ended.

On Stellar Rays presents Ryan Mrozowski’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Open, Other, End, presenting works in a range of media. Mrozowski is a deft interdisciplinary painter, working in acrylic on linen, oil stick and paint on paper, found book pages, and inlaid wood.

The title Open, Other, End hints at what may be Mrozowski’s strategy for constructing paintings, by means of duplicating, repeating, and inverting the most commonplace of imagery (oranges, polka dots, birds, flowers, grass) in endless variations. These items, broken into their constituent parts and stripped of specific or personal context, reveal the uncanny and absurd appearance of a world subject to excessive cataloguing and archiving.

Mrozowski observes his subject matter with a playful and satirical distance, isolating the elements of landscape, still life, or narrative situations. In doing so, he negates both the original intent and artificial construction of desire at the core of most constructed picture planes we encounter on a daily basis, as in the case of display objects and advertising. The use of grids and patterns create an illusion of order. However, this is a decoy; rather, Mrozowski’s characteristic mechanisms for dis-logic charm the viewer’s eye in an absurd and cyclical non-narrative.

Open, Other, End perhaps suggests that more acute comprehension of the world around us is not gleaned from detached isolation, but from attentiveness to detail within a more complex context. Then again––Mrozowski bemuses with paradoxical vantage points, ultimately defying any exacting certitudes.

Ryan Mrozowski (b. in Pennsylvania, 1981) received his MFA from the Pratt Institute in 2005, and his BFA from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Recent solo exhibitions include Art in General, Vilnius, Lithuania (2014); Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY (2012, 2010); and the Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Salon 94, New York, NY (2015); Lucien Terras, New York, NY (2015); Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY (2015); Chapter NY, New York, NY (2014); Knowmoregames, Brooklyn, NY (2014); Ziehersmith, New York, NY (2014); and Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY (2013). His exhibitions have received numerous reviews by Artforum, Modern Painters, Artreview, New York Observer, and more.