Ryan Coffey at Efrain Lopez Gallery

Artist: Ryan Coffey

Exhibition title: On Permanent Display

Venue: Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago, US

Date: November 13 – December 28, 2015

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago

Efrain Lopez gallery proudly presents its inaugural solo exhibition Ryan Coffey on permanent display, featuring new works by Chicago artist Ryan Coffey. For his first solo show at the gallery, we will present three site-specific installations alongside smaller twodimensional works.

Coffey’s new body of work illuminates the fragility of the displayed art-object and the intermittent nature of experience in front of it. By interposing treated scaffolds, masonite, tiles, day-glo spray paint with collages, painting and high-end object production, he alludes to bare and fundamental aspects of artistic production. The result is an all-encompassing installation, a construction zone of work of art in constant process of becoming and unbecoming. In effect, the work, that has no defined ends, blurs the distinctions between foreground – background and narrative versus formal readings. In suspending the space between intentional and the accidental, Coffey engages in a ritualistic-aleatory play between figuration, motion, and tension, and thus establishes a set of new ground rules of art making / presentation.

Ryan Coffey (b. 1981, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Chicago. He received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2003 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute in 2013. Coffey has presented solo shows at Lake Gallery, Ever Gold Gallery San Francisco, Heliopolis Gallery, Brooklyn, among others and a collaborative show at New Capitol Projects, Chicago. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the School of the Art Institute MacLean 705 Space, the Carousel Space Project, Chicago, 111 Minna, Bell Jar and Million Fishes Gallery in San Francisco among others.

Ryan Coffey on permanent display will be on public viewing at Efrain Lopez Gallery, 1620 West Chicago Avenue, Suite 304, Chicago, IL 60622 from November 13, 2015 through December 28, 2015. An opening reception will take place on November 13, 2015 from 6pm to 9pm. Ryan Coffey on Permanent Display is accompanied by a full-color 35-page catalog with text by Ruslana Lichtzier and an artist interview by Stella Brown.