RYAN LEE at Paris Photo 2023

RYAN LEE Gallery is pleased to participate in its first Paris Photo, on view November 9 through 12 at the Grand Palais Éphémère. At Booth C17, the gallery will present boundary-pushing works by Martine Gutierrez, Stephanie Syjuco, Clifford Ross, and Maria Antelman.

In her transdisciplinary practice, Martine Gutierrez explores nuances of gender, class, race, and her own Mayan heritage. The artist places herself at the center of her work; in uncanny self-portraits she undercuts traditional notions of beauty. At Paris Photo, RYAN LEE will present works from two major bodies of work by Gutierrez: Indigenous Woman (2018) and ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS (2021).

On her groundbreaking 2018 project Indigenous Woman, Gutierrez explains:

“The word ‘indigenous’ here is used to refer to native cultures from a particular region, but also as a synonym for the natural and innate. It signifies a real, authentic, native-born woman. There was a time when I believed there was no such title for me to claim. I was driven to question how identity is formed, expressed, valued, and weighed as a woman, as a transwoman, as a latinx woman, as a woman of indigenous descent, as a femme artist and maker? It is nearly impossible to arrive at any finite answers, but for me, this process of exploration is exquisitely life-affirming.”

Gutierrez’s most recent, daring body of work, ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS, continues her exploration of identity across the cultural landscapes of gender, race and celebrity. In the series of 17 portraits, Gutierrez re-envisions a diverse canon of radical heroines who have achieved legendary cultural influence over thousands of years in both art history and pop culture. Using the barest essentials to frame each woman’s story, Gutierrez places her likeness in the realm of the legendary while confronting her viewer to representations of womanhood in all its forms. The full collection of portraits will be presented in its entirety for the first time in a traveling museum show, organized by Polygon Gallery, Vancouver slated for 2024.

Known for her politically engaged work, Stephanie Syjuco’s recent work engages with institutional memory as reflected by national archives and museum collections. The resulting works serve as rebuttals to America’s constructed national identity—in particular, regarding its colonial past.

On view in Paris are works from Syjuco’s 2021 Block Out the Sun series, in which the artist “talks back” to archival materials from the Missouri Historical Society. This body of works depicts Syjuco’s hand covering the faces of Filipinx individuals brought to the United States to be exhibited as part of a ‘living zoo’ in the 1904 World’s Fair. By interrupting the archival photo, Syjuco’s action disrupts the colonial gaze, suspending the repetitious cycle of exploitation and consumption. Photographs from Syjuco’s Block Out the Sun and Chromakey Aftermath series are currently exhibited in Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility at the Guggenheim Museum, NY.

Clifford Ross is a photographer and multimedia artist perpetually on the forefront of inventing and reinventing both traditional and new media. Ross began his well-known Hurricane series in 1996, marking a shift in his practice towards observing the forms and movements of water. He captured striking ocean waves by wading into the surf—while tethered to shore—during severe storms on the East Coast. The first of Ross’s new Hurricane photographs, Hurricane XCV, will be on view at Paris Photo.

In 2022, Ross’s Hurricane works were on view in Sightlines at the Portland Museum of Art, ME, a solo exhibition that surveyed the artist’s œuvre. Recently, his work has also been featured in group and solo exhibitions at NYUAD Art Gallery, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2023); Getty Museum, CA (2021); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR (2021); Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL (2019); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal (2018); Parrish Art Museum, NY (2017); and Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China (2014), among others.

Maria Antelman roots her practice in ecofeminism, exploring the gendered connotations of nature and technology. Believing nature to be inextricably linked to femininity and technology to masculinity, the artist pairs spliced images of the body with photographs of stones and vegetation. The resulting images draw surprising connections between flesh and mineral, and permanence and transience.

In 2020, Antelman’s work was included in Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020 at the Museum of Modern Art, NY. She has also been included in group and solo exhibitions at the Bemis Center of Contemporary Art, NE; Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporaneo, Cerrillos, Chile; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Visual Arts Center at UT Austin, TX; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, CA, among others.