Will Ryman: New York, New York

Widely recognized for his sculptures and public art installations, Will Ryman’s work is filled with an acute theatricality that harkens back to his early career as a playwright. The artist’s ongoing interest in literature, philosophy, and the Theatre of the Absurd manifests in his playful investigation of the folly of existence and our shared search for meaning and resolve. Material and subject are of equal importance for Ryman, whose work reveals his intuitive approach to sculpting diverse materials into expressive forms that examine essential aspects of the human experience. The artist’s prior museum exhibitions and public art installations include Will Ryman: La Villette, Parc de La Villette, Paris (2018), among others.

New York-based art critic Eleanor Heartney is the author of numerous books on contemporary art. Heartney is a contributor to Art in America, Artpress and Artnet and has written extensively for publications including Artnews, The New Art Examiner, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Her books include Art & Today (2008), Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art (2004) and Doomsday Dreams: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Contemporary Art (2019). She is co-author of After the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art, The Reckoning: Women Artists in the New Millennium (2013) and the forthcoming Mothers of Invention: The Feminist Roots of Contemporary Art. She is an Editor-at-Large for the Rail.