January 17, 2011
Ryan Peter Miller. He's a painter. He's unconventional. Like the above painting, from an exhibition titled "Excavation", made by layering acrylic paint deeply on a surface and then gouging through the bulk of the paint to reveal the colors underneath. That's what you call interrogation of the medium, I think. Here's Ryan Peter himself, from his artist's statement:
The ideas that define the discipline of painting are as malleable as the material of paint. My body of work revels in the expansive breadth of paint. It is an ontological investigation, a deconstruction of the discipline of painting into essential signifiers and historical structures needed to make the phenomena of paint function within our contemporary visual culture. The material has been pushed in exaggerated and absurd directions. Process has been separated from the material, removed, re-imagined, and reapplied. The structure is stripped away from the paint and the paint is unapplied to the structure. Paint is the material and the subject. This body of work is the story of painting as told by acrylic paint, a plastic, non-linear story. It is the Democratic ground on which hundreds of years of painting progress now strive for parity.
Yes indeed. He seems fascinated by the sculptural forms that acrylic paint can take – one statue in his oeuvre is called "I Am Paint" and it's a guy made out of cast acrylic paint. It's hard to be that literal in a figurative medium, y'know? Check out his portfolio – there's lots of fascinating stuff.