2014 Catalogue Archive

Ryan Conrad Sawyer’s B.P. paintings are elegant documents of performative gestures made by scattering and burning loose gunpowder on primed canvas. In B.P. 38, the composition is held in the balance between control and chance. Though the work’s final appearance is minimal, it undergoes a violent process of combustion in the act of creation. In Sawyer’s hometown in Virginia, stockpiling gunpowder has become common due to social issues surrounding the Second Amendment. Using this social climate as a framework, Sawyer references one of today’s heaviest social and political discourses, while simultaneously creating a visually striking work of art. Sawyer lives and works in Richmond and Brooklyn. Recent exhibitions include Three Works at Jericho Ditch in Isle of Wight and Home Again, Again at The Journal Gallery in New York.