Ryan McGinley, Algo B, 2010, gelatin silver print 13.5 x 18 inches edition of three. |
Ryan McGinley's Black and White Studio Portraiture |
Ryan McGinley, Larson F, 2010, gelatin silver print 18 x 13.5 inches edition of three.
Ryan McGinley, Louis, 2010. gelatin silver print 18 x 12 inches edition of three.
Ryan McGinley, Chloe B, 2010, gelatin silver print 18 x 13.5 inches edition of three.
Ryan McGinley, Luz, 2010, gelatin silver print 18 x 12 inches edition of three.
Ryan McGinley, India, 2010, gelatin silver print 18 x 12 inches edition of three. |
Team For his latest exhibition, Ryan McGinley has shifted his focus away from constructing a youthful sublime within the boundless American landscape and has concentrated instead on creating imagery within the confines of his New York studio. The result is a surprisingly restrained, open-ended study of black and white portraiture. Here we see McGinley not as a chronicler of youthful adventure, but as an engine for an almost scientific cataloging of a kind of emotional optimism. McGinley's portraits are the result of a meticulous studio practice, in which thousands of images are taken of each sitter; each shoot eventually being edited down to its one defining "moment". During the course of two years, McGinley photographed about 150 hand-picked subjects from across the globe. Bringing these models into his studio and stripping them of their clothing, the artist has succeeded in answering his own question: "What would a classical Ryan McGinley black and white portrait look like?" In this body of work, McGinley's subjects are not presented in an active outdoors; they are not shown within a locatable space — a place where image conjures memory — rather, these figures are suspended in an eternal artifice, a strategic nowhere, so that our attention rests solely on the sitters' state of mind. In this way the portraits can reflect back onto the viewer, becoming surrogates for emotional possibility. There is joy as well as uncertainty in these intimate photographs, and our access to the subjects and their interaction with the photographer seems limitless. In addition to the black and white photographs, the exhibition will also include three large-scale images in color, which locate the other works within the continuity of McGinley's oeuvre. Characteristically exuberant, these photographs add a narrative backdrop to the exhibition, which initiates an ambiguous loop between the two approaches. McGinley's photographs have always mined the space between chaos and control, negotiating the space between the really-real and the only-apparently-so. In this exhibition the push and pull of nature and the studio, of sumptuous color and its absence, create a dynamic tension. McGinley's photographs are included in the collections of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., and many others. The 32 year-old artist has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of Art and at PS1 in New York, at the MUSAC in Spain, and at the Kunsthalle Vienna. Last year McGinley had solo gallery shows in London and in Athens. This is McGinley's third solo show at Team. A new monograph published by Dashwood Books will accompany the exhibition. Included is a conversation between McGinley and photographer Catherine Opie.
Ryan McGinley, Amanda V, 2010, gelatin silver print 18 x 13.5 inches edition of three.
Ryan McGinley, Coco's Cliff, 2008/2009, c-print, 108 x 73", edition of three, from Art Basel, Miami Beach, 2009.
Ryan McGinley, Scott, 2010, gelatin silver print 18 x 12 inches edition of three
Ryan McGinley, Sasha, 2010. gelatin silver print 18 x 12 inches edition of three.
Ryan McGinley, Matt K, 2010, gelatin silver print 18 x 12 inches edition of three. |
Ryan McGinley, Victor, 2010, gelatin silver print 12 x 18 inches edition of three. |
Ryan McGinley, Boy, Girl, Boy on a Boat, 2007, C-print, 30 x 40". |
Beyond Guerilla 'Snapshots,' Ryan McGinley Masters 'Being There' |
Ryan McGinley, Laura, 2007, C-print, 10 x 14".
Ryan McGinley, Diving Water, 2007, C-print, 20 x 24".
Ryan McGinley, Highway, 2007, C-print, 30 x 40".
Ryan McGinley, Falling (Sand), 2007, C-print, 48 x 72". |
Team Team presents an exhibition of new work by the New York-based photographer Ryan McGinley. Entitled I Know Where the Summer Goes, it features McGinley’s “snapshots” that have been evolving steadily since his guerilla show at 420 West Broadway in 2000. In the eight years since he has moved away from an artistic practice that was the soul of casual to an elaborated production schedule that raises the ante on “being there.” He has gone from being viewed as the hottest young photographer in town to being seen as a serious artist with a rare gift for creating enduring color photographs — photographs that show us the best of youth. The title of this exhibition, taken from an early B-side by Belle & Sebastian, is more than just a piece of poetic musing. McGinley does, in fact, know where his summers go. In the summer of 2007, for example, he traversed the United States with sixteen models and three assistants, shooting 4,000 rolls of film. From the resulting 150,000 photographs, he arduously narrowed down the body of work to some fifty images, the best of which are on display here at the gallery. The inspirational images for the project were culled from the kinds of amateur photography that appeared in nudist magazines during the 60s and early 70s. McGinley would sit with his models and look through all of the ephemera of the period that he had collected, discussing with them the mood that he was hoping to capture that day. McGinley had chosen a very specific itinerary that would bring his troop through the incredible range of landscapes that are available across the US and carefully planned a battery of activities, sometimes orchestrating the use of special effects. He has always been quite fond of fireworks and fog machines and in this new work they play a major role. The very artificial constructedness of the project allows for situations in which the models can both perform and be caught off guard. The resultant pictures of nude young men and women playing and living in the great outdoors are innocent yet erotic, casual yet calculated. McGinley’s photographs are included in the collections of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and many others. The 30 year-old artist has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of Art and at PS1 in New York, in Spain at the MUSAC, and last year mounted an ambitious public project in conjunction with the Kunsthalle in Vienna. This is McGinley’s second solo show at Team. |
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Ryan McGinley, Coley & Marcel (Floor), 2007, C-print, 30 x 45". |
