T h e E l e a n o r D . W i l s o n M u s e u m
LIZA fragment Liza Ryan: Fragment Curated by Amy G. Moorefield, Director Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University Ryan March 8 - April 21, 2012 12 Liza Ryan: Fragment by Amy G. Moorefield, Director Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University 22 Rare Bloom: Catch and Release by Johanna Ruth Epstein, Ph.D. Hollins University Assistant Professor of Art 42 Artist Biography 48 List of Works
8 9 10 In her exhibition Fragment, on view at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, Los Angeles-based artist Liza Ryan investigates a litany of experiences that progress gradually through her evocative and sublime imagery. Ryan’s individual works Liza Ryan: Fragment hold hefty information; as groupings, they create Amy G. Moorefield, Director idiosyncratic associations that transform Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University common moments into eerie fantasies. At the core of the exhibition, Ryan explores the notion of fragmentation, both literally and symbolically. She comments, “The fragmented, nonlinear narrative in the work mirrors our lived experiences in this sensory overloaded, information saturated, visually bombarded world.”1 Documenting the minutiae of our lives via fragments, she combines disparate elements to represent the chaos of our time.
Ryan works with photographs that she intermittently marks with ink or graphite. Her “language” includes cutting, collage, editing, appropriating, reframing and sequencing images into layered and evocative cabinets of curiosities. Her images are collected using a variety of cameras: digital, medium and large format, 35mm, toy cameras such as the Diana and Holga. She uses the medium of photography to “capture life as experienced”2 versus as a documentary tool. Usually employing natural light, the work has
12 13 a real time appeal that cannot be captured by other means. In Seer, 2011, hands hold creamy milk over a patterned bowl. Ryan’s use of natural light suffuses the image and illuminates all. Hands, bowl and light become one. The camera acts as a divinatory mechanism, weighing light’s physicality as well as its implied metaphysical nature.
Ryan believes that we experience the world in stories. Her titles such as Hover, Something tells me she didn’t look back, Examine My Stare, and This is No Place I Knew imply action and spark an intense wordplay/image interchange. Her images become interwoven into often-fragmented chapters. The pastiche groupings dovetail into deliberate dances that engage viewers in all directions of the composition; in many cases they push us to look at the periphery of the work, as in I Sew Myself Together from 2007. Comprised of twenty-one photographs arranged in a waterfall shape, the collage draws our gaze to the left and right margins of the work. Beginning with a mouth exhaling breath on the left side, our eye travels up through images of a fragmented body juxtaposed with views of nature, often referencing each other in a gesture (a torso twisted akin to a tree trunk) or a shape (the body of an eel mimicking the split in the flesh of a pomegranate). Selected images of the body are tattooed with graphite alluding to the texture of bark, further emphasizing the transformative relationship between human and nature. Our exploration
14 15 ends on the right with a woman’s mouth sucking in the breath that was depicting images of chaos and beauty, motion and stillness, tension and released by her twin on the opposite side of the composition. About her work, release, Ryan builds a pictorial flood across the museum’s environment. Ryan refers to the tension between internal and the external worlds and From blooming azaleas to forceful explosions, she offers provocative images the terror and exhilaration involved when the two meet. 3 to create experiences congruent to us all.
Deconstruction and reconstruction are among Ryan’s core proclivities. In Lawrence Weschler’s book, Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences, In Exploded Moment, 2010, she deliberately strips apart an image of a tree with he outlines our human ability to merge past events into kinships that conjoin amber and yellow leaves on a field of dark green loamy earth and combines disparate relationships in time. He observes, “I myself have increasingly these pieces with strips of other photographs. Ryan then methodically found myself being visited by similarly uncanny moments of convergences, reconstructs the image, repositioning the strips and subtlely conjoining bizarre associations, eerie rhymes, whispered recollections—sometimes selected sections with graphite. In the resulting collage, the residue of the in the weirdest places.” 4 Narrative in nature and self referential, Ryan’s work gold leaves resembles an exploding constellation. Driven by Ryan’s interest in touches non-sequentially on a timeline, creating a powerful rhythm the subjectivity of time, she “explodes the moment.” Seconds are slowed through divergent and convergent images. Look carefully; her uncanny and down and reconfigured, allowing the viewer the opportunity to experience deliberate selections alternately reveal and conceal the human condition. felt time rather than measured time.
The pinnacle work on view is Ryan’s newest cinematic creation: a site-specific wall collage titled Rare Bloom, 2012. Measuring sixteen feet in height by forty feet in width and undulating from the wall in projections anywhere from five-eights of an inch to three and a quarter inches,Rare Bloom is comprised 1 Email exchange with the artist, January 2012. 4 Weschler, Lawrence. Everything that Rises: 2 Interview with the artist, December 2011. A Book Of Convergences. 2006. McSweeney Books: of one hundred and eighty images, several drawn on with white ink. Alternately 3 Ibid. San Francisco. 1.
16 17 18 19 20 21 Liza Ryan chronicles tension and release, opposites existing together. grid. Cropping and blurring renders individual shots anonymous, but they “Terror co-exists with exhilaration” she says, “beauty with horror.” Her recent maintain, for the most part, an insistent aloofness, rarely touching each other, work explores the intertwinement of body and landscape. Since 2006, defying easy integration. she has created a steadily growing collection Rare Bloom: Catch and Release of work that contributes to a visual conversation A significant precursor toRare Bloom is included in the current exhibition. Johanna Ruth Epstein, Ph.D. in which numerous artists have engaged. Something tells me she didn’t look back (2006) is inspired by the myth of Apollo Hollins University Assistant Professor of Art Rauschenberg’s combines, Sally Mann’s and Daphne, a narrative of a struggle between two bodies in which one truncated glimpses of family, Bruce Nauman’s twists out of the other’s grasp. Overlapping color photographs create a mass “Studies for Holograms,” Harry Callahan’s fondly fetishistic portraits of that moves with an upward sweep toward the right, as if the ghost of Bernini his wife, and above all, Annette Messager’s clustered and isolated body parts, were breathing life into it (his sculpture is similar in form). come to mind. These artists converse in a strange but intimate body language. Rare Bloom also evolves from left to right. Its energy is initiated by a single For me, Ryan’s works create an organic sensation of movement. Rare Bloom, gesture at the far left: a hand shaking open a fan. From the initial frame an installation piece comprised of individual photographs spanning an (the fan’s open crescent) a flurry of cinematic, close-cropped fragments unfurls, eighteen-by-twenty-foot stretch of wall at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, snippets of the human, animal and natural world, presenting us with a presents us with moment-to-moment encounters with contrast: division/unity, fractured narrative. Rare Bloom engages the natural associative inclinations containment/overflow, earth/sky, stillness/movement. Mounted on individual of the mind and eye. From below, a dandelion resembles a jellyfish. Placed wooden supports, Ryan’s bloom of images pushes off the wall at various together like window panes, four identical close ups of blooming azaleas take depths, expanding across and up its surface as if lifted by an air current, on the smoldering glow and geometric regularity of stained glass. advancing and retreating from the eye not unlike bubbles, birds, balloons, or dandelion fluff (subjects of individual photographs within the piece). Ryan is drawn to the inherent tension of spheres, which punctuate the The right-angled edges of Ryan’s photographs impose the discipline of a installation in various natural forms. The orb of the sun, helium balloons, 22 23 mouths blowing bubbles, birds in flight, and a yellow bird held tightly eye’s final climb. At the right edge the images begin their ascent to a spot in a closed fist, are themes that recur throughout. Other themes—a hand halfway up the wall, where the hand reappears, shutting the fan. holding an egg, two feet side by side, swirls of hair framing the top of a bald head, or two thumbs prying open the lips of a dog to expose its fangs, When asked about her photographic techniques, the artist speaks of feeling for instance—appear only once, and suggest emphatic narrative purpose. restricted by orthodoxy, what she terms “pristine” photography. “It’s about At regular intervals, a lace-gloved hand materializes, directing the boundary breaking and movement” states Ryan, who uses “whatever comes flow of energy. to hand,” including medium format, 35 millimeter, toy and digital cameras. When drawing closer to individual photographs, we see what have been In a crescendo of color and tension, Ryan’s enigmatic narrative builds called the artist’s “surprises”— additional white pigment emphasizing specific toward a climax. Black and white scenes of abundance and ether— passages—the halo around the sun, for instance, or billowing sea spray at cumulus clouds, blinding sunlight through tall trees, white helium balloons, the shoreline. and the sun suffused in fog—lead toward a final passage grounded in earthbound imagery. The epicenter of the piece swells with body fragments. On a visit to the artist’s studio, Ryan, a falconry enthusiast, described riding Above, the lace-gloved hand flutters wildly. Below, seismic explosions through the woods on a motorcycle, accompanied by a bird of prey. A falconer erupt. At the heart of the composition is the largest photograph, focused in must know precisely when to free the falcons. “If you release them during on a torso clad in a tight blazer secured by a single, straining button. a high wind,” she explained, “they may follow the current and never return.” As the artist puts it, this embodies “something about to happen.” Standing This seems to me the perfect metaphor for the tenor and cadences that back to survey the installation of more than one hundred and seventy permeate Rare Bloom, imparting the possibility of irretrievable release. photographs, the viewer sees that this button is the mundane detail holding One can almost hear the revving of a motorcycle engine, the crunching of the work together. Beneath this midpoint, overlapping frames descend dry leaves and branches, the rushing of unsteady wind, the beating of wings, steeply toward another image of the hand-held fan, splayed. This impels the and perhaps, from a distance off-camera, a raptor’s shriek.
24 25 26 27 When my favorite grandmother died My mother told me, to comfort me, That death was like slipping A hand out of a worn-out glove And I pictured my thin-haired, lucent skinned, Rather portly grandmother Moving skyward as if a balloon with air escaping, A crumpled, gray glove lying On the ground beneath her. That’s the first time I’d heard of dualism
From Dualism by Mina Ryan
28 29 30 31 I lean Into the southwind until My body’s blown, loosened, unbound,
My skin flies loose, sails, wraps Becomes bark on a birch tree; my skull lifts, Spreads, sticks to the sky, is the dome Of blue heaven;
From Rearranging My Body by Mina Ryan
32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Try To See Them As Bruegel Might
In the foreground, a group of thirty Look again at the cemetery. Dressed in somber suits and black dresses Notice the woman gazing over Form a semi-circle, face a flag Her shoulder toward the men, how a trace Covered coffin, a priest in clerical garb. Of a smile twists her face. Perhaps she Beyond them, a granite obelisk Has stopped trying to attend the priest, And graves. Further back, across a street, Trying to understand the valley Four men, two bare chested, hang yellow, Of the shadow. Perhaps her foot is Purple dresses, and a sign reading About to start tapping to music “Rummage Sale” on an oak draped with moss. Coming from the wide Buick windows.
There is something in the men’s poses, Angle a foot is lifted, the way A thumb opposes middle finger, Mina Ryan That suggests the men could be dancing Or at least keeping time to music That might be coming from the windows Of the maroon Buick parked nearby.
40 41 LZi A RyanLiza Ryan Education 2004 Liza Ryan, William Griffin Gallery, 2005 Weather, William Griffin Gallery, 2000 California Invitational, Ansel Adams Santa Monica, California Santa Monica, California Center for Photography, 1994 Master of Fine Arts, California 2003 Surface, William Griffin Gallery, 2003 Contemporary Photography from San Francisco, California; State University at Fullerton Santa Monica, California The Manfred Heiting Collection, University Art Museum, California 1987 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Dartmouth The Museum of Fine Arts, State University, Long Beach, 2001 Weight of Light, Herter Gallery, California College, New Hampshire University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Houston, Texas Center, Amherst, Massachusetts Soft Machines, The Brewery, TCM at 12: Recent Acquisitions, Los Angeles, California The Contemporary Museum, Solo Exhibitions Rena Bransten Gallery, Honolulu, Hawaii San Francisco, California 2002 New Acquisitions/New Work/New Directions 3: Contemporary Selections, Summer Group Exhibition, 2012 Fragment, Eleanor D. Wilson 1999 Witness, William Griffin Gallery, Galerie Lelong, New York Museum, Hollins University, Santa Monica, California Los Angeles County Museum of Roanoke, Virginia Art, Los Angeles, California Self/Developed, Eyre/Moore Gallery, Rena Bransten Gallery, Seattle, Washington 2010 Exploded Moment, William Griffin San Francisco, California The NSM Vie Foundation and the Gallery, Santa Monica MEP: Supporting Young Photography, 1999 Domestic Pleasures, 1998 Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Soobin Art Gallery, Singapore Galerie Lelong, New York 2009 Spill, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Chicago, Illinois Art Gallery, Reed College, Amerika-Europa, Ein kunslerischer Threshold and Domestic Space, Hollins University Art Gallery, Portland, Oregon (catalog) Dialog, Von der Heydt-Museum, Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Roanoke, Virginia Wuppertal, Germany Wisconsin; Contemporary 2008 New Work: Video and Photographs, 2001 Portretten & Stillevens: Rijksmuseum, Art Center of Virginia, Virginia William Griffin Gallery, Beach, Virginia Santa Monica, California Group Exhibitions Amsterdam, Netherlands Double Visions: Photographs from the Body/Language, SF Camerawork, 2007 Motion Pictures, William Griffin San Francisco, California Gallery, Santa Monica, California 2010 State of Mind: A California Invitational, Strauss Collection, University Art (catalog) Museum of Photographic Arts, Museum, California State Sig-alert, Arizona State University San Diego, California University, Long Beach, California Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona 2006 Fluid, William Griffin Gallery, Santa Monica, California 2006 Biennale of Sydney: Zones of Contact, Inhabiting, Galerie Lelong, Australia New York G- C Arts, Las Vegas, Nevada
42 43 LZi A Ryan 1998 Degrees of Stillness: Images from the 1995 P.L.A.N: Photography Los Angeles Leah Ollman, “Capturing motion Holly Myers, “A Ghostly Presence Manfred Heiting Collection, Now, Los Angeles County Museum in still images,” The Los Angeles Times, Still Felt,” The Los Angeles Times, SSK Foundation - August Sander of Art, Los Angeles, California July 6 October 1 Archive, Cologne, Germany 2006 Andrew Schulz, “Liza Ryan,” Zones of “Continuing and Recommended,” Personal Visions, Miami Art Museum, Contact: 2006 Biennale of Sydney. ArtScene, October Bibliography Miami, Florida Exhibition Catalogue Erick Farrugia, “Piezas de una Lightscapes, Nevada Institute for 2010 Leah Ollman, “Illusions of an Liza Ryan, monograph. Interview buena intención,” Hoy, September 3 Contemporary Art, Las Vegas, altered state,” The Los Angeles Times, with the artist. Santa Monica: September 17 2003 Leah Ollman, “Layers of Meaning, Nevada GRIFFIN Editions All on the Surface,” The Los Angeles Spread, Rena Bransten Gallery, 2009 Liza Ryan: Spill. Interview with the Linda Javin, “Culture: No Contact Times, February 13, E31 artist and essay by Stephanie Snyder, San Francisco, California Please, We’re Australian,” Peter Frank, “Art Pick of the Week,” Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art NewMatilda.com, July 26 1997 Luminous Code, Texas Fine Arts, Gallery, Reed College, Portland, LA Weekly, February 14-20, 144 Austin, Texas. Curated by Jennifer Oregon Ken White, “Making memories,” 2001 Portretten &Stillevens: Photographs Blessing, curator at The Solomon Las Vegas Review Journal, July 14 from the Manfred Heiting Collection. R. Guggenheim Museum, New York John Motley, “Imagining Transcendence: Liza Ryan’s Chuck Twardy, “Ryan’s Expression,” Exhibition catalogue. Text by Hans 1996 Current Fictions: Work by Emerging installation SPILL explores symbols Las Vegas Weekly, June 29 - July 5 Roosebaum and Mattie Boom. Artists, Museum of Photographic of possibility and Limitation,” Sebastian Smee, “Uncomfortably Amsterdam: Waanders Uitgevers/ Arts, San Diego, California The Portland Mercury, February 19 Close,” The Weekend Australian, Rijksmuseum Documenta, Huntington Beach Art 2008 Leah Ollman, “Humans not at one June 24 Zoo Magazine, “Los Angeles,” Center, Huntington Beach, with nature,” The Los Angeles Times, Peter Frank, “Art Pick of the Week,” March, 41 California October 24 LA Weekly, March 13-20 Alena Williams, “Liza Ryan,” Pursuing the Undocumentable, Julia Schlosser, “Liza Ryan,” “Unexpected pairings,” ArtScene, Tema Celeste, January/February, 98 Los Angeles, California. Curated by THE Magazine, December March Sue Spaid 2007 Peter Frank, “Points of View: 2004 Jody Zellen, “Liza Ryan at GRIFFIN,” Internal & External Landscapes at Artweek, November GRIFFIN,” LA Weekly, July 18-24
44 45 LZi A Ryan Double Vision: Photographs from the Liza Ryan: Works 1993 - 2000. 1997 Susan Kandel, “Liza Ryan at Selected Collections Strauss Collection. Exhibition Essay by Charles Merewether. GRIFFIN,” Los Angeles Times, Catalogue. Essays by Constance W. Amsterdam: Cinubia Press September 5, F16 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Glenn, Mary-Kay Lombino, and 1999 Degrees of Stillness: Photographs from Faultline Journal of Art and Literature, Los Angeles, California Arthur Ollman. Long Beach: the Manfred Heiting Collection. University of California, Irvine University Art Museum, California Exhibition catalogue. Essay by Press, vol. V, 1997, 69-71 The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, State University, College of the Arts Susanne Lange. Koln: Stiftung Los Angeles, California David DiMichele, “In an Entirely Anne Kerner, “Paris Photo,” Beaux Kulture Different Manner: Artist/Curators Arts Magazine, January, 110-111 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Alicia Miller, “Peering Behind in LA,” Artweek, January San Francisco, California 2000 Thomas McGovern, “Liza Ryan: Closed Doors,” Artweek, Cathy Curtis, “Convergent Ideas,” Works 1993-2000,” Afterimage, September, 17-18 Los Angeles Times OC Edition, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, November/December Marisa Singer, “The Distance January 23, F1 The Manfred Heiting Collection Leah Ollman, “Art Reviews,” Between Perceptions,” Black + White 1996 Liz Finch, “New Galleries Aim The Los Angeles Times, October 13, F28 Magazine, Fall, 20 Maison Européen de la Photographie, to Make Education Part of the Paris, France Catherine Dorsey, “There’s No Place Dave Bonetti, “Liza Ryan,” Picture,” The Argonaut, April 11
Like Home,” Portfolio Weekly, San Francisco Examiner, January 15 Museum of Photographic Arts, October 24, 29 Claudine Ise, “Rashomon On,” San Diego, California Steven Hilger, “Liza Ryan,” Los Angeles Times, April 30, F24 Art Issues, November/December, 51 Leslie Jarvis, “Witness,” Artweek, The Rosenkranz Foundation, Beyond Boundaries: Contemporary July, 21. Berlin, Germany Photography in California. Exhibition 1998 Rena Jana, “Spread,” Flash Art, The Contemporary Museum, catalogue. Essay by Nora Kabot. October, 80 San Francisco: The Friends of Honolulu, Hawaii Photography Eileen Kinsella, “Looking at New Pictures,” The Wall Street Journal, Hood Museum of Art, September 18, W12 Hanover, New Hampshire
46 47 List of works This catalogue was published photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without on the occasion of the exhibition: the prior permission of the publisher and Liza Ryan: Fragment copyright holder(s). Rare Bloom, 2011-12 Surface 7B, 2003 Pulse, 2010 Curated by Amy G. Moorefield, Director 180 pigment prints and ink, Pigment print, Chromogenic print, Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University 12 ¾ x 35 ¼ feet overall 30 x 40 inches 25 x 17 ¾ inches March 8 - April 21, 2012 Post Office Box 9679 Pages 1, 4, 6-11, 20-21, 26-28, Page 30 Page 35 8009 Fishburn Drive 32, 50, Front/back outside Published by the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum Roanoke, Virginia 24020 and inside covers Blowing Still, 2012 Examine My Stare, 2010 at Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia. 540.362.6532 © 2012 Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at www.hollins.edu/museum Pigment print, 5 pigment prints, Hollins University Seer, 2011 23 ½ x 29 inches 23 ¾ x 99 ½ inches overall All works are courtesy of the artist and Chromogenic print, Page 31 Pages 36-37 Liza Ryan: Fragment © Amy G. Moorefield Kayne Grffin Corcoran unless otherwise noted. 48 x 64 inches Rare Bloom: Catch and Release This publication was funded in part through Page 13 Poetry excerpted from Something Tells Me She © Johanna Ruth Epstein, Ph.D. Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Wyndham Robertson, Rearranging My Body Didn’t Look Back, 2006 Dualism, Rearranging My Body, Try To See Roanoke County and by Eleanor D. Wilson I Sew Myself Together, 2007 by Mina Ryan Chromogenic prints Them As Bruegel Might © Mina Ryan Museum community partner support: Anstey Pigment prints with graphite, Page 33 with mixed media, Hodge, Roanoke, VA; Worth Higgins & 45 x 42 inches 11 feet x 84 inches All images © Liza Ryan Associates, Richmond, VA; WVTF & Radio IQ; Page 16 Moon Mouth, 2010 Page 38 101.5 the music place; Designed Concrete ISBN -10: 0-9823025-7-6 Surfaces, Roanoke, VA Chromogenic print, ISBN -13: 978-0-9823025-7-6 Exploded Moment, 2010 42 ½ x 28 ½ inches Still From…Hungry Eye, 2007 This catalogue was set in New Baskerville, Hand-cut pigment prints Page 34 Chromogenic print, Publication Director: Amy G. Moorefield Gotham and Courier, and was printed four-color with ink and graphite, 48 x 51 ¼ inches Editorial Consultant: Johanna Ruth Epstein, Ph.D. process with a dull aqueous coating on 24 ½ x 89 inches Hover, 2010 Page 39 Design: Anstey Hodge, Roanoke, Virginia 100# Endurance Silk cover and text. Courtesy of Manfred and Chromogenic print, Printer: Anaconda Press, Inc., Forestville, Maryland Hanna Heiting 32 ½ x 25 ½ inches Try to See Them As Bruegel Front and Back Cover: Pages 18-19 Page 35 Might by Mina Ryan Photography: Bill Hazelgrove (Rare Bloom and Details from Rare Bloom, 2011-12 Pages 40-41 Something Tells Me She Did not Look Back), Poetry excerpted from Lure, 2010 all other photographs courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin Corcoran. All rights reserved. Dualism by Mina Ryan Chromogenic print, All works courtesy of the artist No part of this publication may be reproduced, and Kayne Griffin Corcoran Page 29 20 ½ x 23 1/8 inches stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any unless otherwise noted. Page 35 form, or by any means electronic, mechanical,
48 50 51 T h e E l e a n o r D . W i l s o n M u s e u m