Ryan Schneider
Mojave Masks
Artist Statement
The true spiritual legacy of Southern California’s Mojave Desert is not that of the colonial conquests disguised as “discovery,” still unfortunately perpetuated in mock-heroic historical myths of pioneerism and homesteading, but of “rediscovery”—a place where various peoples and cultures dating at least ten thousand years back have found refuge, healing, and solace. Mojave Masks overtly honors this parched desert’s pneuma in the exhibition’s mystical revelry of regionally specific imagery inspired by Ryan Schneider’s relocation from New York City to Joshua Tree, California in 2015. This rediscovery theme also unfolds in subtler layers.
Procedurally, a personal rediscovery is laced into every painting, particularly in Schneider’s emphasis in finding “surprise and joy” in the making of each new piece. Or his calling a painting finished when it has proper “breathing room.” For the first time in Schneider’s career he unites his longstanding habit of making paintings that depict human figures in interior domestic spaces with his ongoing flora and fauna-focused work.
Formally, optical rediscovery happens in every moment of viewing. This is because of Schneider’s saturated color palette that favors shimmering, flashy, and high-contrast colors such as near-fluorescent pinks and oranges that pop against straight-from-the-tube radiant hues like Radiant Turquoise and Radiant Green. Some of Schneider’s complex, densely-patterned compositions take on tapestry-like qualities, inviting our eyes to roam over their surfaces as if gazing across a wide-open desert expanse or through a twilight thicket of cacti forest. Whether his paintings depict daytime or nighttime—suns in full beam or moons glowing in star-studded midnight, backgrounds are often prominent pictorial elements that offer cues. The ultimate goal, in Schneider’s words, are for his “paintings to be a light source.”
Artist Bio
Ryan Schneider was born in Indianapolis, IN and holds a BFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art. Recent solo shows included “No Filter Eden” at V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, “Mojave Masks” at The Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, Oregon, and “You Are Entering” at Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles. Recent group exhibitions included “Hope and Hazard: A Comedy of Eros” curated by Eric Fischl at The Hall Art Foundation in Reading, VT, “Brask Meets Willumsen” at the JF Willimsens Museum, Denmark, and “Natural Selection” at The Hole, NYC. His work is held in public and private collections worldwide, and has been reviewed or featured in The New Yorker, Art in America, Modern Painters, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtInfo, Artsy, Kunsten.dk, and The Paris Review, among many other publications. Schneider lives and works in the wild desert of Joshua Tree, California.
