‘I am afraid of cities. But you mustn’t leave them. If you go too far you come up against the vegetation belt. Vegetation has crawled for miles towards the cities. It is waiting. Once the city is dead, the vegetation will cover it, will climb over the stones, grip them, search them, make them burst with its long black pincers; it will blind the holes and let its green paws hang over everything. You must stay in the cities as long as they are alive, you must never penetrate alone this great mass of hair waiting at the gates; you must let it undulate and crack all by itself. In the cities, you know how to take care of yourself and choose the times when all the beasts are sleeping in their holes and digesting, behind he heaps of organic debris, you rarely come across anything more than minerals, the least frightening of all existants.’ – Jean Paul Sartre
Ryan McGennisken’s paintings are constructed through an experimental studio process that intends to defy considered composition and gesture. He paints ‘alla prima’ in the outdoors, in silence, layering with speed, a combination of paint and found non-art materials like rust, motor oil, and dirt. Colour is employed sparingly, quickly and autonomously. He favours imperfection and seeks unforeseen beauty; adding and deleting marks at every step of the process. Seemingly inconsequential marks can have an influence on his decisions.
The paintings are at times left to weather and decay before sealing the disparate materials in polyurethane.
Ryan’s paintings mirror himself and his interest in the decaying; death, nothing, and filth– in the abandoned, vast emptiness and the mundane.
Previous Exhibition
