The Kid Stays in the Picture: Interviewing Ryan McNamara, and Becoming an Artwork
It is all but unheard of for an artist to become a fixture in the New York art world without having had any solo gallery exhibitions, the normal route to becoming well known. The artist Ryan McNamara, however, has managed to do this. Much of his production so far has consisted of short-lived performances that happened and were gone so swiftly that his reputation rests mostly on documentation produced after the fact. These performances have taken place in disparate locations ranging from gay bars to the Louis Vuitton store, to the woods outside the Watermill Center on Long Island. For one piece, Make Ryan a Dancer, part of MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York” survey in 2010, he spent six months taking dance lessons in the museum, a conflation of durational performance (he actually was learning how to dance) and practicality (he actually wanted to learn how to dance). His first solo exhibition in a gallery, currently at Elizabeth Dee, is both a reference to and an extension of his career to date. Read More
