Ryan Turley is a New York based artist who recently graduated with his MFA in Sculpture from The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Turley has shown in the United States as well as abroad focusing on sculpture and installation works that deal with issues relating to sex, sexuality and gender issues.
For more information on Ryan Turley, or to contact the artist, please visit his website:
www.ryanwturley.com



Ryan Turley — Statement — 2011 —
Underground behaviors, activities and traditions associated with discriminated and oppressed groups of people interest me. Notions of the taboo attract me and often become the centerpiece in my work. Bringing the underground into the light is evident in many of my pieces. I aim to provide an access to these topics, to an audience that may or may not fully understand or appreciate the actual subject matter, but will more than likely walk away with some inkling of having accessed a new experience. The hope, here, is that less marginalized audience members may see the folly in societies need to oppress and denounce specific groups of people, based on matters that are in fact natural in human beings.
Psychological factors related to memory become tools that I institute to translate my thoughts into a visual language. I am attracted to the function of ambiguity and its presence in my work. Flash bulb memories or flashbacks intrigue me in their uncertainty, vagueness and subjective nature. To recall on our past experiences enables us to awaken things in us that we can then interpret and hopefully begin to more fully understand, now that we can view it from a distance. This distance can then create clarity and often revelation.
Through understanding and analysis of these memories I intend to encourage introspection and further dialogue concerning sexuality, identity and sexual orientation. These are not issues solely held as important to the gay community, but these are issues we all deal with, no matter what we identify as or with. Sexuality is an enormous subject and I do not claim to be an expert on it in the slightest. What I do intend to show is what I have experienced and what I know to be true for myself, in my life, thus far.