NEW YORK, NY.- CHART is presenting Will Ryman: New York, New York, opening F New York. The exhibition is on view through October 22nd. Marking the artist’s second solo presentation at CHART since 2020, New York, New York spans the gallery’s two floors. It is the largest body of Ryman’s work to be exhibited in his hometown since 2015.

In New York, New York Ryman presents his ode to the city through a series of vignettes comprising over 10 new painted clay works and a limited-edition bronze. The works vary in scale, from the immense to the diminutive, and are set against the backdrop of sidewalks, park benches, and subway seats. Ryman’s metropolitan 3-D landscape includes not only figures but overflowing garbage cans, roaming pigeons, and a wild rose bed—an allusion to the artist’s iconic series The Roses that first transformed Midtown Manhattan in 2011. These roses are more intimate in scale as are the artist’s new pigeons which he created from clay and nails, the same material he used to build his monumental Bird (2012), a 12’ tall sculpture in the permanent collection of The Broad Museum in East Lansing, Michigan.

Ryman, a native New Yorker, began his career as a playwright deeply influenced by Absurdist Theater. For twenty years he has lived and worked in a building on the Bowery, the storied lower Manhattan thoroughfare that has been the subject of film, photography, and literature for generations. In 2003, he self-produced “a play without actors” at his Bowery space, populated with his handmade papier mâché sculptures. This led to his first gallery exhibition and since then, his work has been the subject of over 60 solo and group shows. Now, almost twenty years later, the artist returns to the handmade staging of his early work and during the making of this exhibition, he began to write a theater piece again.

New York, New York presents a tableau familiar to any New Yorker. Ryman gives shape in sculptural form to both the physical and the unconscious of urban daily life and expresses his profound attachment to the city.

This exhibition will coincide with ongoing presentations of Ryman’s public sculpture in other parts of New York state. In Ghent, Art Omi is currently featuring PacLab (2017) and Sisyphus (2017). These large-scale works were first exhibited in 2018 to critical acclaim at Parc de la Villette in Paris’ 19th arrondissement. On Long Island, LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton features a recently cast 24’ tall rose.

A monograph of Will Ryman’s work is currently in production. With a foreword by Courtney J. Martin, art historian and Paul Mellon Director of the Yale Center for British Art, an essay by author Eleanor Heartney, and a conversation with Joe Fig, artist and Department Head of Fine Arts/Visual Studies at Ringling College of Art and Design, this publication will be a survey of twenty years of his art.

Will Ryman (b. 1969) lives and works in New York. His museum exhibitions and public art installations include Will Ryman: La Villette, Parc de La Villette, Paris (2018); Cadillac, College for Creative Studies, Detroit (2017); Bird, Flatiron Plaza, New York (2013); Desublimation of the Rose, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Coral Gables (2011); Rose, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2011); The Roses, Park Avenue, New York (2011); and Greater New York, MoMA PS1, New York (2005). Will Ryman’s work is in the collections of numerous museums and sculpture gardens worldwide including The New Orleans Museum of Art; The Eli and Edythe Broad Art
Museum, East Lansing, MI; Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville,TN; The National Academy of Design, New York; 21c Museum Foundation, Louisville; and The Margulies Collection, Miami.