RY FYAN
I CAN GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT
New York (February 14, 2008) – Perry Rubenstein Gallery is pleased to present I Can Give You What You Want, the first New York solo exhibition by Ry Fyan.
Working primarily with painting, Fyan creates and explores numinous landscapes where material and metaphysical realms co-mingle. Culling specific cultural and spiritual icons such as the pyramids of Gyza, Tibetan mountains, and ritualistic masks, Fyan presents a hybridized worldview within the framework of his practice. These elements, meticulously painted in a photorealistic style, act in opposition to their expressionistic backgrounds built up from multiple layers of oil, enamel and spray paint. The end result creates shifts in compositional style that ultimately evokes a sense of ambiguity in the works.
At first glance Fyan’s illusory spaces appear to be structured from a matrix of narratives that allude to archeological and cultural highs, however the appropriated pop elements and product labels discovered throughout these landscapes create a humorous polarity between these highs and the social lows of consumerism and mass consumption. Sampling Colgate ads, Pepto-Bismol labels and Young Jeezy album covers, Fyan evokes a feeling of the familiar, albeit with a daringly new sensibility. Often mistaken for collage, these tangled elements beautifully distort and blur the line between allegory and representation.
Ry Fyan completed his BFA in painting at the Pratt Institute in New York, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn and. Recent exhibitions include ‘Panic Room’ at the Deste Foundation, Athens; ‘Mail Order Monster’s’ at Peres Projects, Berlin and ‘Bitten’ at Lightbox Gallery, Los Angeles.