Personal Space
Top: Chen Peng, Okay, I’m Going Home, oil on canvas; Bottom: Mike Ryczek, Taipei, Taiwan / 4.2.22 / 11:33 AM, oil on panel
On view October 1 - November 11, 2022
Sat 10/1, 4-6 pm: Opening Reception
Sat 10/22, 4-6 pm: Proximity - a conversation with Chen Peng and Mike Ryczek
13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present Personal Space, an exhibition featuring paintings by Chen Peng and Mike Ryczek.
Chen Peng and Mike Ryczek begin their paintings with meticulous observation. Peng studies the objects of her daily life, looking for something that provokes an emotional response; Ryczek scours surveillance footage online, searching for the perfect fleeting moment. Although the artists are driven by different impulses, they both use this process as a means of understanding.
In painting familiar, personal objects, Peng creates an inventory of her life that serves as a form of self-portraiture. Each of her paintings in Personal Space revolves around a different object in the vicinity of her work area; it could be a clock from her childhood home or a favorite power tool. Though the objects of these paintings are firmly grounded in Peng’s life, she imagines surreal, dreamy worlds for them to occupy and plays with scale to emphasize their importance to her. While revealing a portion of the artist’s inner life, this body of work also serves as a meditation on how we use objects to construct and reflect our identities.
Ryczek discovered his source material in an online repository of international surveillance camera videos that reveal quotidian details of life that are normally inaccessible to an outsider. Ryczek was drawn to this footage by the unguarded nature of its subjects, and the practical rather than aesthetic focus of its surreptitious cameras. Drawing on the art historical tradition of people-watching, Ryczek’s work is a modern take on a practice now made possible through technological means. His recreation of bird’s eye camera angles and digital distortions reflect the contradictions of our digital age; though technology can collapse vast distances, we are always set apart from each other by the screens that separate us.
The paintings in Personal Space present normally inaccessible worlds stripped of their barriers. Both artists indulge the human, voyeuristic impulse to seek out hidden aspects of life, which feel more genuine for their closely guarded nature. Peng reveals parts of herself by openly sharing private objects she holds most dear. By contrast, Ryczek’s surveillance series offers a clandestine intimacy with the lives of others who have dropped the pretense of public performance. Personal Space invites viewers to reconsider the mundane and find beauty in the seemingly inconsequential objects and activities that comprise our selves.
Preview Personal Space
About the Artists
Chen Peng is a Taiwanese artist; she currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, where she is a Visiting Instructor at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She received a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from Boston University, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and a Bachelors of Arts in Philosophy from the National Taiwan University. Peng was an artist-in-residence at The Studios at MASS MoCA and the Vermont Studio Center. Her paintings have been shown in New York, Boston, Cleveland, and Taiwan, and have been included in several public collections including Cleveland Institute of Art, Metro Health, University Hospitals, and Fidelity Corporate Art Collection. She is a recipient of various grants and awards from the National Culture and Arts Foundation (Taipei, Taiwan), MASS MoCA, and the Ministry of Culture - Taiwan, among others. Peng’s work was recently published in New American Paintings’ MFA Annual issue.
Mike Ryczek graduated from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 2006 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. He lives and works as a full-time painter and designer in Dedham, Massachusetts. Ryczek’s work was selected for a juried exhibition at the Danforth Art Museum in 2015, and has been featured in Art Maze Mag and by the Jealous Curator. BOOOOOOOM has twice given Ryczek its Editor’s Pick award. Ryczek was a recipient of the 2022 Painting Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Ryczek was featured in a solo exhibition, Fascination Street, at 13FOREST in 2020.