Preview Ryan Johnson's "Self Storage" at The Suzanne Geiss Company

Ryan Johnson, The Perfectionist, 2012
Photo by Matthu Placek
Courtesy of The Suzanne Geiss Company, NYC

In Ryan Johnson's new show at The Suzanne Geiss Company -- his first solo exhibit at the gallery -- the New York-based artist attempts to blend fantasy with the mundane, creating a self-storage unit filled with everyday objects that appear to have taken on lives of their own. Much as a tight storage space might cause objects to commingle with one another, Johnson's "Self Storage" intends to "allude to a sense of accumulation" and create "a site where disparate ideas are left to linger and bleed into one another," according to the exhibit's press release. Using wood, medical casting tape, and sheet metal the show features sculptures resembling a precarious, two-dimensional-seeming rocking horse, a bicycle that appears as if it will take off on its own and a phantasmagoric, mannequin-like figure balancing a pyramid of oranges on its head. Each piece -- and its relation to all the rest -- attempt to address themes of instability, transition, and liminality in our everyday lives. See preview images above and below.  


Ryan Johnson, Rocking Horse, 2012
Photo by Matthu Placek
Courtesy of The Suzanne Geiss Company, NYC