Some curiously large roses sprang up from Park Avenue last year in the springtime. As if out of a childhood dream, The Roses ran from 57th to 67th street, their stems entwined and massive bugs resting on them. They were the stainless steel and fiberglass creation of installation artist and sculptor Will Ryman, presented by The Fund for Park Avenue Sculpture Committee. This year, Ryman makes a mark with his new show of ambitious sculptures titled Anyone and No One.
Will Ryman, the son of minimalist painter Robert Ryman, has prepared three installations taking up both Paul Kasmin Gallery spaces— he is the first artist represented by the gallery to do so. For the 293 Tenth Avenue space, Ryman has crafted a 90-foot Everyman lying against the perimeter of the gallery walls. Four hundred and eighty-five shoes make up the figure’s shirt. His limbs are made of three thousand silver bottle caps. In the next room, Ryman’s labyrinth of paintbrushes is installed. The fourteen-foot tall sculpture consists of two hundred thousand paintbrushes stacked on top of one other in an organic structure. In the 515 W. 27th Street space, Ryman displays a 12-foot high, 16-foot wide Bird. The colossal Edgar Allan Poe-inspired sculpture is made with fifteen hundred fabricated nails and weights about two tons.
“There’s a lot of myth surrounding this show,” Will Ryman says of his new pieces. A fan of spirituality, he investigates the beginning and end of life through Everyman, the meeting of nature and artifice with his Brushes, and the soul leaving the body with Bird.
Anyone and No One will run February 16 – March 24, 2012.
DZI: The Voice 