Cordy Ryman

Cordy Ryman is a New York-based abstract artist who fuses painting and sculpture using humble materials, most often acrylic paint and wood. He’s known for large-scale, site-specific installations that can be broken down into smaller components that stand alone. Ryman’s works are always responsive, reacting to their environments, their own layered histories and to one another.  He maintains a resourceful playfulness in his practice, with an evolving vocabulary of form and color that informs the consistent freshness of his work. Unpretentious and playful, he respects the unfinished and elevates the imperfect with an approach that is simple, physical and elegant.

Ryman has been included in exhibitions at the  Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; The Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY; Bronx River Arts Center, Bronx, NY; Columbus College of Art & Design, Columbus, OH; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; Esbjerg Museum of Modern Art, Esbjerg, Denmark; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT; University of Springfield Illinois Galleries, Springfield, IL; and Visual Arts Center, Summit, NJ. In 2006, Ryman was the recipient of the Helen Foster Barnett Prize from the National Academy Museum. In 2013, he installed a large-scale public commission at Michigan State University, and in 2014 he received a Percent for Art Public commission by the NYC Department of Education which was permanently installed at PS. 11 Kathryn Phelan Elementary School in Queens, NY in 2017. Ryman’s work was the subject of a year-long solo exhibition, Free Fall, curated by Thomas Micchelli, at Tower 49 Gallery, New York, NY. A catalogue including new scholarship by critic and poet John Yau, an interview with the artist by art critic Jill Conner, and photographs by Jeffrey Sturges, was published to accompany the show. In 2021, the architect Morris Adjmi installed a site-specific installation of Ryman’s works in his New York headquarters.

The artist’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, BOMB Magazine, and Time Out NY, among others. Ryman’s work is held in collections worldwide, including Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; Microsoft Art Collection; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS; Raussmüller Collection, Basel, Switzerland; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; and The Speyer Family Collection. Ryman received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and lives and works in New York, NY.

Download his CV here