Modus Ponens: works on wood

The Phatory is pleased to announce Modus Ponens: works on wood by Cordy Ryman. The exhibit opens on April 15 and runs through May 7. An artist's reception will be held on April 15 from 7 to 9 P.M.

Cordy Ryman's painterly reliefs compel the viewer to attend not only to the works' objecthood but also to the evidence they give of their own process of construction and to the process through which they are perceived. Enforcing that reflectiveness, the works are best appreciated as exhibiting multiple aspects, just as a traditional landscape is seen both as a representation of a place and as an assembly of patches of varied color. Ryman's works thus act as theaters for reasoning, cognitive narratives whose suspense plots are built on a gradual process in which the object comes into focus both as a construction and an experience. Utterly contemporary, yet also harkening back to the heroic rigorousness of the art of the 1960s and 1970s, Ryman's work engages both the eye and the brain.

Cordy Ryman widely exhibits his work in the United States and abroad. A graduate with honors of the School of Visual, he is the recipient of 1997 Rhodes Family Award for Excellence. Along with his one-person exhibit at The Phatory, his work is also included in MOMA / PS1's Greater New York 2005 survey of important contemporary art being produced in New York City.