The Life and Work of Ronald Bladen

A painter whose compositions address the continuity of movement, climate change, infrastructure, and architecture, Torkwase Dyson grapples with ways space is perceived and negotiated by black and brown bodies. These subjects produce abstractions that explore the history and future of black spatial liberation strategies and environmental racism. Explorations of how the body unifies, balances, and arranges itself to move through environments become expressive and discursive structures within her work. Dyson builds the paintings slowly, accumulating washes and configuring geometric elements through improvisation and reflection. The subtle use of atmospheric color, lines, and scale in the paintings invites the eye to consider the conceptual and corporeal knowledge of space in real time.

Ursula Von Rydingsvard has lived and worked in New York City for over 40 years. Over a remarkable four-decade-long career, Ursula has become one of the most influential sculptors working today. She is known for creating large-scale, often monumental sculpture from cedar beams, which she painstakingly cuts, assembles, and laminates before finally rubbing a graphite patina into the work’s textured, faceted surfaces. Her signature abstract shapes refer to things in the real world — vessels, bowls, tools, and other objects — each revealing the mark of the human hand while also summoning natural forms and forces. In recent years, von Rydingsvard has explored other mediums in depth, such as bronze, paper, and resin, continuing to expand upon her unique artistic vocabulary.

Dr. Robert S. Mattison, Marshall R. Metzgar Professor of Art History at Lafayette College, is the author of numerous books, articles, and exhibition catalogues, including Franz Kline: Coal and Steel, Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries, Arshile Gorky: Works, and Robert Motherwell: The Formative Years. Dr. Mattison’s book titled Ronald Bladen is published by Abeville Press.

Sculptor and journalist William Corwin is from New York. He has exhibited at galleries in New York, London, Hamburg, Beijing and Taipei. He has written regularly for The Brooklyn Rail, Artpapers, Bomb, Artcritical, Raintaxi and Canvas. Most recently he curated and wrote the catalog for Postwar Women at The Art Students League in New York, an exhibition of the school’s alumnae active between 1945-65, and 9th Street Club, and exhibitions of Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Mercedes Matter, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner and Elaine Dekooning at Gazelli Art House in Mayfair. He is the editor of Formalism; Collected Essays of Saul Ostrow, (2020).