Ry David Bradley
Room with a Views
The Hole Gallery NYC
18 Feb – 26 Mar 17
Selected Works
Dropdown IconInstallation View

Room with a View, Installation view, 2017, The Hole Gallery.

Room with a View, Installation view, 2017, The Hole Gallery.

Room with a View, Installation view, 2017, The Hole Gallery.

Room with a View, Installation view, 2017, The Hole Gallery.

Room with a View, Installation view, 2017, The Hole Gallery.

Room with a View, Installation view, 2017, The Hole Gallery.

Exhibition Text

After presenting his works in group exhibitions and art fairs in 2016, the gallery will devote our large rear space to a full show of painting and installation that looks at looking out the window in the digital age.

Works on synthetic suede are hung in large window-pane shapes on the walls opening up our big white box to views of the outside world. Mimicking loading images in new browser windows, the paintings look like they are still rendering, about to snap into focus for a view of the tantalizing outdoors. Perpetually blurred, super saturated dye-transfer prints mimic screenic color, glow and intensity while being tactile, soft and fuzzy physical objects. Many works look like the sky or trees, bodies in motion, people and plants, suggestively out of focus.

Like E.M. Forster's novel the exhibition juxtaposes the conservative or traditional position of the "room" (gallery) with the future-gazing open-minded window "view", so to speak; a contrast found in the open aspect of technology and connection paired with the prosaic isolation that devices enforce. As with his previous exhibitions, Bradley meditates on the new ecosystem of digital imaging and its effect on painting, isolation and intimacy, and of course the potential and shortcomings of new media not just for painting but for people. How much of a view, how much promise and freedom and openness do these digital windows provide, and how does that compare to the "window" offered in classical oil paintings? Or even how do the digital windows of surveillance, live streaming, social media alter the view that we can see out of them?

Sullivan+Strumpf acknowledge the Indigenous People of this land, the traditional custodians on whose Country we work, live and learn. We pay respect to Elders, past and present, and recognise their continued connection to culture, land, waters and community.

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