Ryo Toyonaga: Sculptures in Clay, Metal and Mixed Media
May 25, 2006- June 24, 2006
537 W 24th St
In his first exhibition at the
Charles Cowles Gallery, RYO TOYONAGA will present large-scale mixed
media, cast metal, and ceramic sculptures. A few years after moving to New York City from his native
Japan in the late 1980s, TOYONAGA began developing a vocabulary of biomorphic forms, appearing
to emerge from the earth itself, perhaps the depths of the ocean or recesses deep in forgotten mines.
TOYONAGA describes the creation of his work as an organic process coming from deeply intuitive
place within: “In creating my sculptural pieces, I seek to extract fragments of long forgotten organic
forms from the realms of both personal and collective subconscious. In this way I hope to express the
timeless connection and friction between man and nature. It is a consequence of this approach that the
images I perceive and interpret in my art are often of the monsters that inevitably feed on this conflict.”
Edward Leffingwell, in an essay for the exhibition catalogue, describes the work as being “endowed
with distinct ambivalent sexual identity and the affect of real or imagined organisms, these creatures
may seem at once vulnerable, amazing, sensual and sinister, as though extraterrestrial or waterborne.”
During the 1990s, TOYONAGA worked exclusively in clay, altering the works appearance through
firing method, surface pattern, and added nodules, tentacles, and even commonplace spouts and valves
protruding from the exterior. As the organic energy flowed and changed within his imagination,
TOYONAGA expanded his vocabulary of expression and materials, including the introduction of red
wax in 2002, bronze and aluminum casting in 2004.
With an interest in increasing the size and stance of the work, TOYONAGA began exploring papiermâché
in 2005. Retaining his familiar forms TOYONAGA shapes the malleable material around
armatures that allow his otherworldly and humorous creatures to loom over the viewer with a presence
unheralded in his earlier work. His most recent pieces are a suite of 60-by-40 inch wall panels figured by
“amoeboid red wax fissures,” another display of his innate ability to tap a connection to the organic
world.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show| Location | | | Gallery | Charles Cowles Gallery | | Address | 537 W 24th St
New York (Chelsea)
NY, 10011
United States | | Phone | 212-741-8999 | | Fax | 212-741-6222 | | Hours | Tue-Sat 10-6 | |
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