Seasons change: new works by Ryan McGinley show a fresh direction
It's easy to forget that Ryan McGinley began taking photographs a decade ago, before the mass proliferation of image making and sharing in the wake of social media platforms. McGinley’s photographic voice, informed by memories of his older siblings and their friends, and the death of his older brother when McGinley was just 17, has been emulated by many young photographers in recent years, revered for their atmosphere of nostalgia, caprice and transience – and their absence of cynicism. The New York-based artist’s preternatural nudes are visions of an American utopia of youth.
McGinley’s concurrent exhibitions at Team (gallery, inc.) – Fall, in Los Angeles and Winter, in New York – present a shift in the artist’s practice, moving away from his iconic Road Trip imagery. The nude has always been central in McGinley’s oeuvre, but in these new images, his interest in the body as pure form and movement is more salient than previously. Inspired by the romantic style of the Hudson River painters in the Northwest, the lush archetypal seasonal settings scintillate through McGinley’s lens.
In large-scale works such as Sugar, Paul (Frederic) and Deep Well, (all editions of three, 2015, and on show in Los Angeles) the juxtaposition between the rich fall colors and the almost abstracted body - both temporary and transitional in their photographed state – conjures that fleeting feeling that typifies McGinley’s work, but here it is offered with greater confidence, without the immediate invitation to narrate the image that earlier works often elicit.
Surprisingly, this is McGinley’s first solo presentation in Los Angeles, at the Team gallery’s bungalow space in Venice – on view until 20 December.
INFORMATION
Winter is now on view until 20 December at Team gallery in New York and Fall is on view until 20 December in Los Angeles
Photography courtesy of the artist and Team gallery
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Charlotte Jansen is a journalist and the author of two books on photography, Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021). She is commissioning editor at Elephant magazine and has written on contemporary art and culture for The Guardian, the Financial Times, ELLE, the British Journal of Photography, Frieze and Artsy. Jansen is also presenter of Dior Talks podcast series, The Female Gaze.
-
La Vie en Rose: can the Jaguar Type 00 reset the narrative surrounding the brand’s reinvention?
This is the Jaguar Type 00, the first physical manifestation of the reborn brand’s new commitment to ‘Exuberant Modernism’. We take it for a semiotic spin
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
The RIBA House of the Year 2024 winner is a delightful work-in-progress
The winner of the RIBA House of the Year 2024 is Six Columns in South London - the home of architect and 31/44 studio co-founder William Burges
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Bold maximalism engulfs The Lafayette Hotel and Club in San Diego
The Lafayette Hotel and Club, designed by Post Company, brings together a rich tapestry of patterns, themes and colours
By Dan Howarth Published
-
Inside Luna Luna: the amusement park designed by artists lands in New York
‘Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy’ – featuring rides by Basquiat, Lichtenstein, Hockney, Haring, and Dalí – has opened at The Shed
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Henni Alftan’s paintings frame everyday moments in cinematic renditions
Concurrent exhibitions in New York and Shanghai celebrate the mesmerising mystery in Henni Alftan’s paintings
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next Door
The Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
By Anne Soward Published
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New York
Violet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
By Mary Cleary Published
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West
‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American West
The artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990s
New York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Derrick Alexis Coard’s portraits are a sensitive, positive testimony to Black men
The late artist Derrick Alexis Coard’s retrospective ‘I Am That I Am’, at New York’s Salon 94, honours his ‘symbolic expression for possible change for the African-American male community’
By Tianna Williams Published