May 12, 2008
This week
the West Coast Crew heads down to Ratio3 to talk to Ryan McGinley
and gallerist Chris Perez.
Ryan McGinley makes large-scale color photographs of nudes in
abstracted natural landscapes. With his subjects as willing
collaborators, he used photography to break down barriers between
public and private lives. Drawn from skateboarding, music, graffiti
and gay subcultures, his models perform for the camera and expose
themselves with complete self-awareness. McGinley's more recent
work signals a departure from the urban youth culture images for
which he is well known – over the past few summers he has been
working almost exclusively in natural settings in the American
west. At 24, he was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the
Whitney Museum of American Art. He has also had solo exhibitions at
PS1 and in Spain at the MUSAC in Leon. In 2007 he was awarded the
Young Photographer Infinity award by the International Center for
Photography.