Ryan Nord Kitchen - 2020 Paintings

22 Jan-12 Feb 2021

Overview

Online viewing room: https://taymourgrahne.viewingrooms.com/viewing-room/22/?_preview_uid=0d42b3145a374671990c91c8044e711c&version=1918a6 Kitchen’s first solo presentation since 2018 continues to inhabit the space between abstraction and representation. Canvases seemingly inclined toward pure gesture are refuted by references to the natural world, both archetypal and impressionistic. Through rhythmic play and the integration of fragmentary linear and planar elements, Kitchen works toward cultivating a contemporary and unique vernacular. Kitchen’s practice resides between drawing and painting. Through the use of flattened volumes and the tension created by heightened formal contrasts (figure and ground, surface and depth) Kitchen creates objects that build off the modernist legacy of Marsden Hartley and Paul Klee. If seemingly improvised, each mark is indeed measured, informed by both personal experience and an ongoing investigation of formal composition. Cumulatively, the works construct a lexicon of vistas, moonlit gardens, sunlit pathways, and river views that encourages a reverent, if idiosyncratic, reading of the American landscape.