(DCKT Contemporary [web])
Artist Cordy Ryman exhibited at Lower East Side powerhouse gallery DCKT Contemporary and is also in Miami’s prestigious Rubell Family Collection museum. Though March 5, 2011, a Cordy Ryman exhibit titled “Windowboxing” appears at the Washington, DC’s kingmaking Conner Contemporary Art [web]. Ryman is known for non-objective installations and wall-pieces assembled from painted or raw lumber. Ryman is also the son of an artist who had a Guggenheim solo in the 70’s and who is represented by Pace ---a heritage which has given Ryman a huge career head start while also admittedly making him nervous. Artist and art-writer Terry Ward spoke with Ryman in January of 2011.
Terry Ward:
Why did the Art World notice you?
Cordy Ryman:
I grew up in the Art World so for me it was probably different than it was for most other artists. Both of my parents are artists, all their friends were artists, even my babysitters were artists! So naturally I didn't think about art or the Art World at all. …The easiest answer is that the Art World noticed me because of my last name. While this probably has had some truth to it, I hope in the end there was more to it than that. My last name has probably helped me in terms of getting someone to LOOK at what I did, but then at the time it hurt in the sense that early on every move was looked at in a context (both positive and NEGATIVE) that was beyond my control. This stuff used to really bother me but at this point I’m fine with it.
Terry Ward:
Well, okay if your folks are known, OF COURSE you get to leapfrog over the other half-million hungry aspiring artists who want to get in…. like how Sofia Coppola got to cut ahead of 50,000 film school grads and get right into directing since Daddy made “The Godfather” and the family already knew everybody in the trade. Sure. But you know, then she made “Lost in Translation” and it is such a subtle masterpiece that now she can make anything she wants and she's got respect ---not because of Daddy but because of her own work.
Cordy Ryman:
There was a while where I would also have this lingering feeling of shame about this idea that I was "following" in (my parents’) footsteps. But eventually this wore off ---fcuk that! I shouldn't be ashamed of where I came from. That language is truly MINE as much as it is anyone’s! It’s part of me like it or not, and I’m connected to it whether I like it or not.
Terry Ward:
Any influences you want to mention?
Cordy Ryman:
I suppose the most obvious ones would be both of my parents, and the NY Art World of the 70s-80s. My mother would drag my brother and I to openings and museums constantly, not so much to broaden our horizons or train us but rather that it was just what she was doing so we were stuck for the ride. I hated, hated, hated it. I didn't really like the Art Word, nor did I think about it that much ---other than to think it was lame (as most kids think their parents are lame). All of their friends and the works they had in house must have influenced me as well. …I guess when I was making my …emotion based figurative …Rodin/Edvard Munch …sculptures as a teen there were always people coming in and out of the house who noticed them and responded (or not), and it was this sort of work that I used to apply to art school. When that work ended/burned out during my first year there, I started working in an abstract, non-representational, process-oriented way. During my second year… I was doing these small-scale Kurt Schwitters / abstract-expressionist-type collages. My first "show" was during this period. Christian Haub, an artist who at that time had started an artist-run gallery in Long Island City at Tennisport, saw my work and really liked it, and put me in some shows around 92/93. …When I started making "abstract" work in my early 20s I was shocked and amazed to find that I knew this whole "language" that I didn’t know I knew. I had a deep connection to it that I hadn't acknowledged or fully realized until I started "working" with it myself. Those first few years 1991-94ish were amazing for me. It was like a whole new world opened up to me, and yet it was like deja vu over and over again. I could just work and in doing so would make "discoveries". I was finding out where I came from and who I was in relation to those things. My work was no longer contingent upon a specific emotional state or idea; I could just go, and react and things started going and evolving on their own! It was really cool, and felt very liberating!
Terry Ward:
I like how the (circa 2009 non-objective lumber) creations of yours sometimes had that Easter-egg candy coloration because the pastel tones kinda made fun of the usual associations one has with the material you used: 2-by-4 lumber! I liked the contradictory notes of building material ---lumber--- which is ungainly and heavy and crude, then having these delicate pastel toddler colors. It would be like painting a section of highway guardrail pink ---or of dipping an anvil in a few coats of clear glass. Okay, that last line I realize sounds insane, but as a fellow artist I'm sure you understand. Your installations at Conner Contemporary are now mostly white. I applaud that too since it gives a lightness that contradicts the tallness and monumentality of the big wall piece ---color choice makes the 15-foot lumber piling light and airy even though we're talking about planks, not ricepaper. The blaze orange paint inside of course puts reflected color onto the wall and it takes a certain sensibility to notice that. Is the "lightness" and delicacy ---using pastel colors or white-with-reflected-dayglo--- you put into your lumber sculptures, that amusing visual contradiction, is that something you're going to be doing more of?
Cordy Ryman:
It's something that I've done before at times. So in the future I’m sure I'd use it again. I feel that my work evolves in a spiral ---with branches--- as opposed to a line. I tend to work in multiple directions, branches, at once ---often in opposition to each other. Then eventually I loop back to earlier ideas. Over time all the little moves and branches become pieces of a building vocabulary. ….I guess every show is different.
Terry Ward:
Do you start with preconceived notion of what to create or is it spontaneous, intuitive action?
Cordy Ryman:
Both. Some works are very much planned and preconceived, and then others are completely spontaneous. I usually work on both types of things at the same time. I’ll start with an idea and as I work, I create castoffs which become other works. The palette I use for the "planned" work A becomes the base for work B. The cutoffs for work A become collage elements in work C. Then it will work backwards too: works B and C will make me rethink and change work A. Then I start work D based on some refined reaction to A+B+C. Then A,B,C, and D are all going at once. Eventually one of them will …drop out and be "finished". …I tend to work in a number of directions at once. I might do a tight planned piece, and then right after I will do something loose and crazy almost as a reaction. When working with galleries …this sometimes comes through and sometimes not. For the show at Conner (Contemporary) now, Leigh (Conner, the principal) tended to want to use works that were within the same “branch” so to speak. Either way is fine with me.
Terry Ward:
The slat-pieces like Kamko Wave in Conner’s courtyard or Third Wave formerly at DCKT and such ---where planks lean at angles against walls in undulating patterns ---are they affixed to the wall? The outdoor ones: what if it’s windy? Is there a “service contract” with the galleries if a cloudburst comes thru ---like do they reset fallen planks or is it not valid unless you do it?
Cordy Ryman:
They are sometimes fixed to wall via Velcro or small brackets. The one at Conner is not fixed. It just leans. There is no "correct" way to install it really other than keeping that pattern. The wave and spacing can be altered by me or anyone else. I think of those types of pieces (ones with many loose components) as being semi-collaborative with whoever installs it or owns it. There is a loose guide and example setups, but from there it's yours to play with.
Terry Ward:
Ever seen the Jasper Johns light bulb? looks like a light bulb with paint on it and then you find out it’s a bronze cast painted to look like a light bulb with paint on it. Will there ever be a Ryman wave-piece of what looks like painted lumber but it’s really bronze or lead or some such inside?
Cordy Ryman:
That is something that has come up before when people have asked about the possibility of doing a permanent outdoor wave that doesn't weather and break down over time. So far I've declined as something about it didn't appeal to me ---not even sure what--- maybe I just didn't want it to feel fabricated or manufactured. But who knows.
Terry Ward:
Do you feel the Art World is “credentialist”?
Cordy Ryman:
Unfortunately yes! I think the Art World is full of a lot of empty and insecure people who don't have supreme confidence in their own opinions or eye. These people seem to need credentials and opinions of others who they "respect" to confirm whatever they might think. Obviously this is not the case for everyone in the Art World. Many times I have seen people not respond to my works ---and then have their responses change in relation to my "credentials".
Terry Ward:
What else …would you like to say?
Cordy Ryman:
….I guess I would give my generic spiel about how what I do is sort of cross between painting and sculpture ---abstract, usually process based, some works are very thought out and planned, some are more intuitive and reactive. Lots of recycled materials. They are both about art and art history, and personal and about me somehow at same time. I would then go into things further or less depending on how much the person asking nodded/ eyes glassed over. If their eyes glassed over, I would usually apologize for being an abstract artist and reassure them that if I totally understand how people hate or are disinterested in this type of work. I used to be there too. I'm totally into what I’m doing, but I know it's not for everyone.
Interviewer artist Terry Ward with artist Cordy Ryman in 2011.
Installation view of Cordy Ryman Windowboxing.
Painted lumber, dimensions variable, 2011.
Photo: courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.
Detail view of Cordy Ryman Windowboxing.
Painted lumber, 2011.
Photo: courtesy Robert Chapman ArtPhotos.
Detail view of Cordy Ryman Windowboxing.
Painted lumber, 2011.
Photo: courtesy Robert Chapman ArtPhotos.
Installation view of Cordy Ryman Kamko Wave.
Painted lumber, 118 pieces, dimensions variable, 2011.
Photo: courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.
Cordy Ryman Window Box.
Painted lumber (acrylic and enamel on wood, 54"x 52"x5", 2010.
Photo: courtesy Robert Chapman ArtPhotos.
Detail view of a Cordy Ryman site-specific window piece.
Lumber scraps on velcro on wall, 2010-11.
Photo: courtesy Robert Chapman ArtPhotos.
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