Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami presents the first institutional solo exhibition for the New York-based artist Ryan Sullivan. In his distinctive approach to painting, Sullivan proposes new relationships between image and object as he negotiates his own subjective decision making with the radical agency of his medium. Staging complex interactions of materials, he produces images that are seemingly in motion, alive, and contingent in their embodiment and description of material flows.

The exhibition at ICA Miami will display a group of large-scale works from the past two years, featuring non-compositional forms and an organic color palette that is alternatingly vivid, murky, and sublime. Despite their robust physicality, the absence of traditional gesture, and the sheer uniqueness of their facture, these works can be discussed in terms of process inasmuch as the studio is today more than ever a mediated site that informs the reception of painting. Transcendent of medium and process, Sullivan’s works offer critical solutions to a world in which abstraction has taken on a life of its own.

About Ryan Sullivan

Ryan Sullivan was born in 1983 in New York and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, in 2005. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Hydra’s Workshop, Hydra, Greece; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and MoMA PS1, New York. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the University of Chicago. .

Publication

In conjunction with the exhibition, ICA Miami is publishing the artist’s first monograph, due for release in winter 2015. Produced in collaboration with Dancing Foxes Press, the catalogue features contributions from Alex Gartenfeld, Tim Griffin, and a conversation between painter Laura Owens and the artist.