The Bonnier Gallery is pleased to present Redux, our first solo exhibition by American
artist Cordy Ryman. The exhibition will open on Saturday, January 25th from 6 – 9pm and will be on view through March 14th, 2020.
For the past twenty-five years Cordy Ryman’s work has been rooted in manipulating materials across a wide range of scale, including wall, floor, corner works, and installations. Painting primarily on wood allows Ryman the versatility to expand the work’s viability. The result provides a consistency in form and practice that lends itself to evolving motifs that are only recognizable overtime. The process and method that he has developed can be viewed as a constellation of constant and careful reiteration.
The works on view in Redux are composed of elements that existed in previous forms and often had different functions. Reacting to the nature of the material and the relationship between the material and the space around it, Ryman has adapted and rendered the material into new forms. Ryman explains, “When the requirements for the previous forms cease to be, the histories contained in the materials begin to break down and return to a state that entails a redux.”
The primary focal point of the exhibition is Ryman’s large-scale, site-specific Root Vine Pyramid. The corner installation is composed of two-by-fours that have been repurposed and cut into over a thousand parts resembling bricks. Painted in vibrant hues of red, blue, green, and white, the components are assembled on two adjacent walls to form a pyramid.
Another important body of work within the exhibition is known as the Dimar works. The wood, originally in the form of sixteen-foot joists, was reclaimed from a masonry building located nearby Ryman’s studio in Brooklyn, New York. Built in 1920 as a clinic, the building was demolished in 2018, and the joists were gifted to the artist. In these works, Ryman explores ways in which the material could be reconstituted into significant forms and continue to exist as viable entities. Ryman cut and assembled his material into free- floating works mounted on the wall, grids, and stacked towers.