Bryan Ryley

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Bryan Ryley, B.F.A., M.F.A.

Associate Professor
Department of Creative Studies
Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies

Office: FIN168
Telephone: (250) 807-9768
Email: bryan.ryley@ubc.ca

Research Interests: Contemporary painting
theory and practice with emphasis on systemic
abstraction and image as protagonist in cultural
reconstructions; creative processes and the
examination of autonomous language;
curatorial voice.

Curriculm Vitae

Artist Statement:

My studio practice moves amongst painting, drawing and sculpture with a major focus
in two dimensional practices. Paint body, systemic processes, structural reasoning and
a collage aesthetic govern the methodology while issues of individual/self perceptions
and social identity construct the major areas of inquiry.

Provoked by world events, with its many cultural migrations and mutations, I have
been developing a body of work that exists under the working title of ‘Interference’
and resulting in the present body of work entitled ‘SALTUS’. By placing overlays of
information onto a prepared substrata, in effect disfiguring, degrading, and interfering
with a direct or singular read of foundational information, this examination has given
access to larger questions that ultimately reside in a metaphysical realm.

In 2003 I began looking at the homeless, the ‘other’, the disenfranchised through
works that had as their foundational ground a digital image of Hindu Saddhus (A
Child of God, 2003). Utilizing text and veils of paint I sought to examine the position
these peoples find themselves in, their ‘outsider’ status detrimental in a world focused
on conformity and abhorrent of differences, a reality constructed through veils of
overlaid and misguided perceptions (Dissonance has its Place,2003). This led to an
interest in looking at the use of the ‘cruciform’, a symbol which has migrated and
been overlaid worldwide, and which has restructured many societies. Works such
as ‘Interference-Haida Gwai’ (2005) emerged, wherein a statically broken veil is
overlaid on a centrally embedded cruciform, suggesting the present effects of
this collision between Indigenous and Christian beliefs. ‘Shopping in Baghdad’ (2005),
with its central red cruciform shot full of holes and surrounded by ‘Ralph Lauren’ blue
and white pinstripes, was a reaction to the west’s incursion into Iraq and the politics
of power. These issues continue to govern and modify an idiosyncratic language that
has become more purely abstract, void of objective image or concrete symbol.

Belief systems are by definition structures of thought. With this as a premise and
wishing to remove the inflammatory to reach a more personal experience I have
constructed the body of work entitled ‘SALTUS’. Utilizing systemic based processes
wherein the ‘order and method’ of execution is preset and orderly, paint is moved
in a lateral direction across randomly prepared grid supports (something
akin to John Cage’s prepared piano). The influence of the ground layer in this work
appears to run interference to the determined order of the subsequent layers,
constituting what at times feels like the remnants of discordant fax transfers (Yellow
Bullet, 2007) or aerial reconnaissance maps (The Circus Animal’s Desertion). Time,
or the reconstituted duration of an action, becomes apparent allowing for a felt
response to information that appears to be both concrete and fleeting at the same
time, something closer to that ‘quality’ of experience, that ‘sampling’ construct, we
experience in this digital age.

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Last reviewed 5/27/2008 3:43:10 PM

Circus TRAIN
2007
acrylic on canvas
72" x 84"