Ryan Mrozowski: Arm in Arm with the Empty Spirit
In his first solo show with Brooklyn’s Pierogi Gallery, Ryan Mrozowski explores ideas of mediated experience in luminous acrylic paintings. Each contain multiple figures, usually gathered into a crowd. Often, he places isolated figures that appear to be judging, officiating, recording, or directing the action. The crowds engage in surreal, or perhaps a better description would be suprareal proceedings, like taking humanoid babies out of the bellies of beached sharks or dragging astronauts out of rivers. The scenes are extrapolated out from pastiched found photographs, grounding the spectacular (in all senses of the word) at the threshold of reality. They’re just weird enough to jolt you out of complacency with the everyday.
The work repositions cultural experiences as so much showboating, and points out how effete the quiescent Joe Publics in the audience are. But the work, lushly painted and seemingly awash with light, is not damning: it’s a mad mad mad mad world, Mrozowski says, but it’s kind of neat, isn’t it?