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Bryan Ryley
Sum of Destructions
November 7, 2009 to January 10, 2010
This exhibition features a suite of ten
works on paper and a related large painting that local artist Bryan Ryley
produced in 2004, inspired by a reproduction of a drawing by Picasso. The
Picasso work was one of the numerous studies he produced in preparation
for his famous 1937 painting Guernica, which was a political
protest against the bombing of the Spanish village of Guernica by the
Franco regime. The village was apparently considered to have been a
stronghold of the Spanish Republican resistance, but contained mainly
women and children at the time. The image in the drawing, is of a fist
gripping the handle of a shattered sword. Ryley traced the reproduction of
the drawing scanned this, then output it onto the large sheets of drawing
paper, on which he worked with paint and collage to create these finished
works. Ryley takes his title from a famous quotation of Picasso referring
to his own working methods. Like Picasso, he also explores the themes of
violence and war in these works, in which the mark-making that would
appear abstract is often personally symbolic to the artist. |
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