| During the opening of the Preview Berlin Art Fair, Ryan was serving vodka cranberry mixers out of Dixie cups to friends and collectors in his solo booth. The drinks were hard (he called them “Cape Cods”), and all around people were swilling down the blend amidst ten of McLaughlin’s newest paintings. Representing him at this fair was the Basel based gallery Groeflin Maag, whose owners, Claudia Groeflin and Davia Maag, were lounging on the beige two-seater, watching as their young artist moved from group to group, from conversation to conversation, leaving each with a “bon mot,” and a distinctly piqued interest. |  |
Ryan McLaughlin – Carson Chan
During the opening of the Preview Berlin Art Fair, Ryan was serving vodka cranberry mixers out of Dixie cups to friends and collectors in his solo booth. The drinks were hard (he called them “Cape Cods”), and all around people were swilling down the blend amidst ten of McLaughlin’s newest paintings. Representing him at this fair was the Basel based gallery Groeflin Maag, whose owners, Claudia Groeflin and Davia Maag, were lounging on the beige two-seater, watching as their young artist moved from group to group, from conversation to conversation, leaving each with a “bon mot,” and a distinctly piqued interest.
McLaughlin belongs to a group of young American artists that have recently made the German capital their permanent home. Berlin’s cheap rent has allowed artists to subsist on odd, sporadic jobs—leaving them with much more time and energy for making art than their colleagues in New York. When LA based gallery, Peres Projects, opened a space in Berlin last year, it created the necessary economic and social infrastructure for this expatriate community. Since its opening, the gallery has employed a rotating group of young American artists to produce work for more established names like Terrence Koh and Dan Colen. Short-term work permits a basic livelihood, but there is a general feeling that life in Berlin is always in transition. Few American artists obtain the necessary legal documents to remain in Germany. The days seem lighter here—lifted, in flux. McLaughlin lives in the Neukölln area of Berlin. Formerly an esteemed borough of the Prussian state, it is now home to about 300,000 Turkish immigrants. In 1977, David Bowie released his Heroes album while he was living in Berlin and even named the ninth track “Neuköln.” Music critics have interpreted the loose structure of the song and the lone, plaintive saxophone as reflecting the rootlessness of Neukölln’s Turks, an immigrant population that has been growing there since the mid-50s. Mclaughlin’s own roots are from Worcester, MA, a woodsy satellite town about half an hour south of Boston.
McLaughlin’s pictures verge on this side of surrealism. Where surrealists mine the unconscious psyche for images, the weird and bizarre, for McLaughlin images come from a finely wrought set of scenarios that works to validate each image through a sustained repetition of themes and characters. The group of paintings presented at his first solo show at Groeflin Maag (each about 50cm in dimension) depicted scenes from the woods and portraits rendered in a style that suggests 17th century aristocratic patronage. Doctor Stevens, Allen (an owl) and a kite-shaped character named Borox illustrate a loose but elaborate narrative through their various activities in this cycle. Borox and Payment shows Borox in a clearing next to a silver suitcase partially hidden under a rhododendron bush. A sledgehammer lays close by. In Borox Playing Jazz, Borox is pictured in front of a heavy stonewall on a hill, with a trumpet attached to its side.
Dr. Stevens is found in equally befuddling predicaments. In one image, the doctor is shown in portrait, wearing full surgical prep-gear with snow falling in the background. In another, Randome Inspection, we see him standing vacant in front of what looks to be a military control panel. A mysterious, shiny grey cone hangs upside down next to his head. Such incongruous situations draw out an oddly shaped story line. The paintings are like clues—or stills from a movie—and the viewer is left to animate the action in between.
Like the most memorable Fragonards, the forest provides a pastoral backdrop for many of the paintings—immediately placing the narrative outside the realm of our everyday. Depicting woodland settings lets McLaughlin tap into a deep collective reservoir filled with legends, myths and magic. The primal forces that organize the woods are fundamentally inhuman, supernatural—it’s a place not governed by conventional logic. In Tooth of Stevens, a large molar lifts off like a space shuttle amidst thick, tangled foliage. It leaves behind a trail of steam that billows out into a beige and silver plume of Rococo clouds.
History: both art history and McLaughlin’s personal history seem fused together to create the conceptual foundation for his practice—the backstory to his fictions. (Dr. Stevens takes on a richer, fuller expression when one knows that he grew up with two doctors in the family—his father is a gynecologist, his mother an internist.) Almost all of his work since 2004 has been rendered in a distinctly historical style. The 17th century’s palette, staginess and emotional equipoise account for much of McLaughlin’s artistic genealogy. He has developed a technique that is reminiscent of the strong, courtly brushwork of the past, although many of his quick, efficient markings index much more recent practices. One of the most striking similarities to Baroque painting is in his work with glowy, contrasted lighting—each figure seems spot lit in front of a darkened background. Historic aesthetics and chiaroscuro are not exclusive to McLaughlin, but whereas others like artist Odd Nerdrum take from heavy, brooding sources like Rembrandt, McLaughlin refers to a lighter, more genteel past. In Allen in Guido Reni’s Backyard, the Bolognese Baroque master of stylish pathos is referred to by name. (Reni’s St. Sebastian looks almost debonair. His St. Peter is buff). In it, a slot machine sits on top of a cloth-draped pedestal. Allen, the owl, is in the foreground proceeding through the woods. Disparate images and associations are forced into bizarre relationships with one another and the lack of any predefined context or associations between slot machines, and Guido Reni’s backyard delays any facile apprehension of what one is seeing. McLaughlin envisions this delay as a “veil”—a mechanism that pulls the viewer’s attention toward the possibility of a fiction.
Warm, antique colors, the theatricality of the situation and the latent sense of drama in the shadows add to the Baroque-Italian reference. Guido Reni is best known for his painting of St. Peter being crucified upside-down. It was commissioned as an altarpiece for St. Peter’s Basilica just two years after his arrival in Rome as Annibale Carracci’s assistant in 1602. Four-hundred years later, in 2002, McLaughlin moved from Providence, RI, to Rome for the Rhode Island School of Design’s honors program under the watch of Holly Hughes and Ezio Genovesi. It was here that his style took on features of the old master’s paintings. RISD’s facilities in Rome, Palazzo Cenci, is close by to the wealth of Caravaggios and Velasquez’s at the Palazzo Doria Pamphili. Learning from the past was a way to open up new possibilities. In Rome, the current and the contemporary are always distorted through the ubiquitous presence of the past. After a year in Rome, McLaughlin moved to Berlin, where he currently resides.
Ryan McLaughlin showed at the Artissima 13 art fair in Turin, Italy. His paintings are in two group exhibitions at Susanne Hilberry (Detroit) and Duchess Presents (Chicago), both in January 2007. In May 2007, he will have a solo exhibition at Gazon Rouge in Athens, Greece. He is currently represented by Groeflin Maag in Basel, Switzerland.
