EXPO Chicago 2023

Booth 326
April 13-16, 2023

RYAN LEE, Booth 326, installed at EXPO Chicago, 2023.

RYAN LEE is pleased to showcase iconic works by ten important artists in the gallery’s first presentation at EXPO CHICAGO.

New works by Gideon Rubin, Katy Stone and Anne-Karin Furunes will debut at the fair. Stephanie Syjuco’s Chromakey Aftermath (Standard Bearers) (2019) will be included in OVERRIDE, the fair’s city-wide collaborative public art initiative. Also included in the gallery’s booth will be recent work by Emma Amos, Tim Braden, Kota Ezawa, Masako Miki, Clifford Ross, and Donald Sultan. The work on view will range from photography, sculpture, painting, lightbox, and sculptural installation, thus reflecting the diversity of approaches each artist has to their craft.

Anne-Karin Furunes

Calving Glacier X, Kronebreen, Svalbard (scale), 2023

Acrylic on canvas, perforated

78 7/8 x 145 inches (200.3 x 368.3 cm)

In Stephanie Syjuco’s Chromakey Aftermath series, the artist photographs chaotic compositions of protestors and their protest props portrayed entirely in bright, chroma key green. Chroma key—commonly referred to as green screen—is a photographic technique that allows editors to fabricate new backgrounds or settings post-production. “Fascinated with the detritus and objects left at the scenes [of protests], as well as items confiscated by police that were interpreted as potential weapons,” Syjuco’s dominating, green fabric interrogates how the media superimposes its own narratives onto protests.

This work is featured in Override: A Billboard Project, a citywide public art initiative exhibiting artwork on billboards throughout Chicago.

Gideon Rubin

Blue Hair Band, 2023

Oil on linen

27 15/16 x 26 inches (71 x 66 cm)

Gideon Rubin

Untitled (White Bathing Suit), 2017

Oil on canvas

11 7/8 x 9 3/4 inches (30.2 x 24.8 cm)

RYAN LEE, Booth 326, installed at EXPO Chicago, 2023.

Kota Ezawa’s works serve as conduits of events for both history and pop culture, translating them into personal memories and experiences. Visit to Hiroshima is a poignant take on Barack Obama’s historic 2016 visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan. This lightbox illuminates the moment that Obama observed a solemn moment of silence before the Memorial Cenotaph, a monument containing the names of the dead. “is work is part of a recent series in which Ezawa studies and captures momentous instances of peace and diplomacy by some of history’s most iconic leaders.

Color is a continuation of Emma Amos’s 1960s and 1970s exploration of gender, social, and racial dynamics of color, an investigation that remained a hallmark of Amos’s style throughout her career. Implying a preoccupation with colorism and sexism, Color is also deeply implicated in the formal aspects of color theory, texture, perspective, and composition. The work is explicitly painterly, as is conveyed by the painter’s palette bordering the central composition. The woman at the center of the painting purses her lips in a kiss to the viewer as she shakes her skirt. Dancers and athletes have frequently been the subjects of Amos’s work—in this work, the joyous, central figure dances atop a field of pixelated dots of blue, yellow, red, and green. The overall work—aptly and pointedly named—is a joyous celebration of a multi-colored identity and world, as depicted by Amos’s colorful palette.

Donald Sultan

Mimosas with Silver June 28 2022, 2022

Enamel, acrylic, and graphite on masonite

48 x 96 inches (121.9 x 243.8 cm)

RYAN LEE, Booth 326, installed at EXPO Chicago, 2023.