Ryan Crotty | Manual Transmission

The really real things of the world are in fact processes.

— Timothy Barker, Against Transmission: Media Philosophy and the Engineering of Time

​

High Noon is pleased to present Manual Transmission, the gallery’s fourth exhibition with Nebraska based artist Ryan Crotty. In his newest paintings, Crotty deepens his longstanding exploration of painting as a dynamic interface where historical method, technological logic, and human perception converge. Using a series of rigs and hand-crafted tools of his own design, he orchestrates controlled pulls and gestures that blur the line between touch and automation.

 

The luminous planes and contours suggest light structures that might belong as much to circuitry or code as to landscape or atmosphere. Their origins are obscured and the trace of the artist’s hand is present, yet mediated, translated through the mechanisms of his tools. In this way, the paintings allude to the art object as a site of craft and labor while engaging a contemporary visual language rooted in digital experience.

 

Each painting consists of the same three transparent pigments— Phthalo blue, Quinacridone red, and Hansa yellow light— suspended in gloss gel medium and applied over a primed linen surface. Built up in successive layers, the varying densities of pigment and medium interact optically, generating an infinite spectrum of secondary and tertiary hues.

 

In the lineage of Color Field painting, Crotty resists autobiographical expression in favor of tonal shifts that speak to subjective experience and unconscious associations. The paintings, however, remain inseparable from the physical and emotional landscape in which they are made. Working in his studio in rural Nebraska, he is surrounded by an expanse of open sky, farmland, and horizon where weather and light shift with an almost cinematic intensity.

 

Manual Transmission describes not only the process of making but also the way perception is transmitted by visual information passing through layers of material, light, and thought. This concept of transmission links the immediate visual experience to the technological and historical frameworks that inform Crotty’s practice, from Modernist automation experiments to the algorithmic logic of digital production. Recognizable or seemingly legible elements in his work are continually at odds with those that resist understanding. The paintings emphasize the imperfect transfers of his process which rely on friction, gravity, viscosity, and the subtle imprecision of the human body, positioning the work between intention and contingency.

 

Ryan Crotty earned his BFA in painting from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his MFA in painting from Syracuse University. His work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. Recent solo shows include a solo presentation at Untitled Art with High Noon, Miami, FL; Ever So Slightly Off, Rutger Brandt Gallery, Amsterdam, NL; and Underlying Issues, Galerie Robertson Ares, Montreal, QC. Recent group exhibitions include The Stage is Yours! curated by Eric Gauthier, Exo Gallery, Stuttgart, DE; Spectrum, Galerie Bessaud, Paris, FR; and Tone Poem, The Hole, Los Angeles, CA. His work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Artillery, and Design Milk. Crotty lives and works in Auburn, Nebraska.