Ryan Pierce | Awake Under Vines | Viewing Room
Ryan Pierce
The Fugitive, 2020
Flashe and spray paint on canvas over panel
47 x 60"
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“Ryan’s work masterfully captures our world through sharp and pregnant detail.”
Ryan Pierce
Flash Flood, 2020
Flashe and spray paint on
canvas over panel
72 x 96"
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Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Awake Under Vines, the latest series of large-scale paintings by Ryan Pierce, featuring artworks that combine an electrified palette with allusions to environmental activism and radical resistance. In these new works, Pierce continues to illuminate relationships between the human and natural world through dynamic dreamlike imagery infused with moral complexity and wonderment.
Ryan Pierce
The Waterworks, 2020,
Flashe and spray paint on canvas over panel,
42.25 x 40.25"
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“His sense of humor, enthusiasm, and persistent hope in light of the challenges facing our planet have made many of us in Portland—and beyond—far more aware of our responsibility to care for ourselves, each other, and the world we inhabit. ”
Ryan Pierce
After the Treehouse Fell, 2020
Flashe and spray paint on
canvas over panel
47 x 60"
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Amid overgrown foliage or desolate desert landscapes, Pierce includes swirling, floating, dripping clothing, tools and detritus that form a surrealistic treasure map of discarded objects from celebratory aftermath. In the painting, The Ever-Parting Curtain, hints of figuration and domestic life intertwine with wild animals, flowers, trees and twisted branches.
Ryan Pierce
The Ever-Parting Curtain, 2020
Flashe and spray paint on canvas over panel
42 x 54"
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The artist’s sharp societal critique synthesizes with his idiosyncratic imagination to invite viewers into evocative and joyful scenes that propose a collective reawakening.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ryan Pierce received his MFA from California College of the Arts in 2007 and a BFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2003. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Elizabeth Leach Gallery (Portland, OR), Nine Gallery (Portland, OR) and at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder (Trondheim, Norway). His work has also been shown in group exhibitions at the Schneider Museum of Art (Ashland, OR), STREAM Gallery (New York, NY), the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA) and at Irvine Contemporary (Washington, DC). Pierce's work resides in the collections of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Seattle, WA), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Hallie Ford Museum of Art (Salem, OR) and The Multnomah County Courthouse (Portland, OR). In 2019, Pierce was selected to participate in the inaugural exhibition of the Portland Art Museum's regional triennial titled the map is not the territory.
