RYAN THAYER
Timemachines
APRIL 23 -
JUNE 12, 2011
Opening reception: Saturday, April 23, from 7 to 9 pm
N O M A GALLERY is pleased to present "Timemachines", new works by artist Ryan Thayer.
Timemachines is a series of photographs exploring contemporary concepts of the future. These photographs focus on a group of devices that are cameras, which take pictures and also display them. By directly exposing the screens of these cameras onto photographic paper a digital image is recorded as a unique photogram. These photograms combine the past with the present and the future by presenting a historical record of objects we consider to be futuristic, an archive of our past futures and an image of what the future looks like at this moment. An iPod is considered futuristic but it can only play recordings from the past. Laptops stream news “live” and iPhones provide instant video conferencing in FaceTime but here the present has been replaced with the concept of ‘real time’, a perpetually delayed experience of events. These devices are time machines and the future they propose displaces the present they are designed to enhance making us ever more connected to the past. In this series of photographs cameras are witnesses to their own obsolescence.
Ryan Thayer (b. 1980) is an artist currently based in St. Louis making conceptually driven large-scale sculptures and photographs. Ryan Thayer received his MFA from California College of the Arts in 2006 and has studied in London and Berkeley. His work has been exhibited at venues throughout Europe and the US including; Southern Exposure (CA), Skydive (TX), Gallerie Box (SE), Koh-i-noor (DK) and Unten Drunter (SE). Upcoming for 2012, he has been awarded a Danish International Visual Artists Program (DIVA) Artist-In-Residence Grant to exhibit in Copenhagen, Denmark.