Ryan McGinness

RYAN MCGINNESS’ work consists of an amalgam of icons and symbols. Drawing from his background in the design industry, McGinness’ work resolves the clinical graphic aesthetics of media as vast, contemplative fields of intimate meditation. It incorporates strong social commentary on iconography, language, and historical and contemporary symbolism.

“I’m trying to communicate complex and poetic concepts with a cold, graphic, and authoritative visual vocabulary. I concentrate on shape, line, color, and composition to communicate within simplified picture planes. As such, the work resides somewhere between abstraction and representation.”

Ryan McGinness’ recent body of work has been his Women series. Based on figure drawings from life models, McGinness’ Women series captures the essence of beauty in its simplicity of form. He explains, “Two parallel desires drive these new Women drawings: My desire to simplify and iconify the underlying visually logical geometries inherent in my figure drawings in order to better understand my subject matter; and my desire to embrace and capture the purely aesthetic experience of graceful curves and sensual forms inherent in my models.”

His graphic drawings and personal iconography are replicated, decontextualized, and materialized infinitely throughout his densely layered paintings. His works are in the permanent public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Cincinnati Art Museum, MUSAC in Spain, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Misumi Collection in Japan.