The CLUB is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of American artist Ryan Sullivan in Japan.

Born in upstate New York, Sullivan currently lives and works in New York City. His works are in museum collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in recent years, he held a solo exhibition at the ICA Miami in 2015, and exhibited commissioned work at The High Line in 2019.

The paintings reflect Sullivan’s evolving use of casting resins, colored with various pigments, to create compositions in which layers and gestures resolve into flat planes. The works arise from an intuitive method of working, their different elements bearing witness to a mental process that fluctuates between a state of unconscious- and semi- consciousness. Through this improvisatory process, viscous resins are translated into free-flowing, gestural abstractions that metamorphose between diaphanous translucence and a luminous opacity; that together form energetically-charged compositions defined by vivid, syncopated rhythms. Sullivan’s creative process is instinctive and unrepeatable in an equivalent way. His method, whereby the resin is pooled brushed, streaked and pooled stirred, creating streams and filling ultra-thin cavities that are filled; the final paintings ‘de-moulded’, is both a constraint and a necessity – a vital kind of pressure. In a marked contrast to the cast paintings, the works on paper mark a deliberate break in technique, while compositionally recalling their mood through the free-form, dynamic process and bold constellations of colour. The act of layering two kinds of paint with markedly dissimilar properties introduces a parallel element of chance. We hope you enjoy this extensive series of the new paintings and works on paper by Ryan Sullivan.

Press release courtesy The Club.