David Ryan: Early paintings 1980's

Early paintings 1980's

Paintings from 1980's

Most of the work in the 1980s (produced at Chisenhale Studios and SPACE studios, BELSHAM Street, Hackney) were concerned with both gestural activity and the grid. I was fascinated by the idea of the grid’s potential openness and yet binding function. Gesture, in all these works is broad, having some relationship with calligraphy. Most of these works are made in encaustic, a medium of wax and oil, and in many the grid is raised, physically, as a boundary between parts. Towards the end of the decade, these elements become formalized (as in Untitled (Voie 2) and the woodlands gallery installation shot – the gestural and the mechanical become more pronounced as opposites.

David Ryan