Review | Riley Ragland is a c...

Generated on 2022-01-25 09:45:29

Result #1

The only major difference between her past and present work is the change in materials. Now all her work is made with the patience of a professional domestic worker, the same patience she should have used when constructing the pieces. The end result of her labor is an almost photographic kind of painting, one that, like the photographs of the hand-carved women, remains opaque.

Result #2

Riley Ragland is a contemporary artist that creates work with the central themes of femininity, sexuality, and self. Ragland works with diverse and unconventional mediums such as: flower petals, nail polish, sequin, money, coins and more. In her earlier work, she explores intersections between nature and vaginal imagery. In her later work, she explores beauty and perception of self through still life and different approaches to self portraiture. While her focus has changed, juxtaposition between realism and abstraction has always been a primary focus. She draws inspiration from artists such as: Georgia O'Keeffe, Hannah Wilke, Rene Magritte, and Cindy Sherman. rage, 2006, is a realistic portrait of Raglands face, a composition based on a dream image that she made of herself in a mutilated form of Star of David; it depicts her with her eyebrows up, the style of a headdress. Other works feature Raglands face in a variety of poses and postures, such as an altered photograph of her smiling at the camera. Her pose is still that of a self-conscious caricature, but is now also a parody of self-parody. Shes changed and continues to change, 2006, consists of three replicas of the artists head. Represented by three shrunken heads, each in a different size and position, they are suspended from the ceiling by metal chains from which extend pointed arms and legs. Two of the chains are pulled back so that they cannot be seen in the bottom third of the viewer, and one leg is tipped up and crossed over. The chains become an integral part of a blindfold of sorts, which hints at the execution of the head in the gallery, but does not signify the same. The other three replicas allude to the same portraits of Raglands. The same arm and legs that suspend them make them self-reflexive, making the work that much more difficult to see.Raglands recent work achieves an additional spin by also revealing some unfamiliar aspects of her own body, both in its material state and in its emotional state. The two pieces that make up the group are headless, doppelgänged nude figures. (The works are dated from 2006.) Each one is made up of rag paper covered in gel medium, a plaster base, and silk, which is laid on the rag paper. A crevice arises between the gel medium and the plaster, and the face that emerges emerges is a distorted, aging face. Only one figure is in a fully formed state, which might suggest a rebirth of memory.

Result #3

Riley Ragland is a contemporary artist that creates work with the central themes of femininity, sexuality, and self. Ragland works with diverse and unconventional mediums such as: flower petals, nail polish, sequin, money, coins and more. In her earlier work, she explores intersections between nature and vaginal imagery. In her later work, she explores beauty and perception of self through still life and different approaches to self portraiture. While her focus has changed, juxtaposition between realism and abstraction has always been a primary focus. She draws inspiration from artists such as: Georgia O'Keeffe, Hannah Wilke, Rene Magritte, and Cindy Sherman. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Recently a few years ago Ragland started to make small and carefully constructed sculptures using highly reflective aluminum foil. For these pieces, she uses clear plastic to build reflective compositions of transfigured geometric forms that are also small, half-inch cube-like, and polygonal. She also used a caustic and confrontational form of spray paint to smear, scratch, and otherwise scar the aluminum foil, making it unrecognizable, and allowing it to shift between serene geometry and ugly crack. These pieces are strikingly disquieting, their lightness a spectral intensity that belies their sharp edges. The works also bring to mind the violence and destruction of late patriarchal culture. In a few cases the aluminum foil is penetrated with surgical knives, and in other cases, the aluminum is slashed.The techniques used are totally disquieting; their beauty is affected and bloody, their oddness provocative. These sculptures are a meretricious collision of the real and the artificial. At the same time they are resolutely alive, a living synthesis of the beautiful with the smudged and abrasive. As a result, they invite a reflection on the longing for a time when nature would appear as beautiful, and would look as organic as an arrow grazing on a dung beetle. In that light, the knives become grotesque and callous.At the same time, Raglands aluminum pieces are brash and abrasive. Her fractal forms recall the violent inanities of his Manifesto of 1968, while their grisly edges suggest a glimmer of violence in our current environmental conditions. The color is applied with care; it is slightly worn, rubbed, and scratched; it is stained and scratched. With such colors, it is difficult to accept the violent metaphor of knives, and of cutting into the aluminum. What has happened is that the aluminum has been stripped of its color, so that the surface has become an ugly, knotted web.

Result #4

Riley Ragland is a contemporary artist that creates work with the central themes of femininity, sexuality, and self. Ragland works with diverse and unconventional mediums such as: flower petals, nail polish, sequin, money, coins and more. In her earlier work, she explores intersections between nature and vaginal imagery. In her later work, she explores beauty and perception of self through still life and different approaches to self portraiture. While her focus has changed, juxtaposition between realism and abstraction has always been a primary focus. She draws inspiration from artists such as: Georgia O'Keeffe, Hannah Wilke, Rene Magritte, and Cindy Sherman. Raglands paintings have always been direct, but more of the latter. Her recent paintings incorporate subtler references to reality and experience through the incorporation of mirrors. The most recent work combines a mix of collage with geometric shapes. In particular, Sassy Recorder, 1988, is an erotically charged conflation of collage and stencil. The collages consist of patterns of sections of hair, broken paint, and images of hand and hands—all made of cutout, rusted iron, and stenciled lettering. The painted layers of cutouts and scatters of paper combine a range of disparate elements with a staid realism that conveys the prosaic trappings of everyday life.Most of the work is not painted on canvas; Raglands recent works are found on found surfaces. To describe the majority of these pieces as collages would be a misnomer. Thats why the groupings she has selected are made of found objects and do not have the smooth polish of a painted collage. They are not high-gloss paintings—Raglands references are not to cheap patterns but to homey tidbits of little and no-nonsense blue nail polish. She relates these materials to the collages of ribbon, paper, and paper wrapping paper. The abundance of these found objects provides a contrasting contrast to the paintings, which consist primarily of carefully made images of collaged scraps. Rival, 1988, is composed of fragments of a book, a nail polish tube, and an image of a woman holding a syringe. These cutouts are layered and smeared into a bright, glossy surface. Raglands choice of objects and images is here less a referential statement and more a reflection on our social world. Her self-portraits suggest that, in life, such things as the objects in our lives are as meaningless as that of an image on a cigarette label or a scene in an old movie.

Result #5

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