NEWS: Bridge Announces Ryan Tynan: “Inner Child,” at Northeastern Illinois University Library Gallery July 1- Sept. 1, 2023
July 1- Sept. 1
NEIU / Ronald Williams Library
5500 N St Louis Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625
OPENING RECEPTION: Sunday, July 2, 2 - 4pm
RYAN TYNAN: INNER CHILD / Exhibition Statement
The first Chicago exhibition for Bridge artistic collective member Ryan Tynan, this survey of the artist’s early work will delve into his work in video art, set design and model-making, and breakthrough work in cinepoetics.
Tynan, the first cinema section editor for the Bridge Journal, identifies as a practitioner in the emerging genre of cinepoetry, a form that has emerged out of the adjacent and related areas of intersectional work such as poetronica, the videopoetry of Tom Konyves and other pioneers such as Gianni Toti and interdisciplinary artists including Eduardo Kac. As a distinct precursor category, Video Poetry developed as an expanded field encompassing installation, performance, new media art and poetics in the works of Gary Hill, Philippe Boisnard, Billy Collins and many others. Today, cinepoetry remains an emerging field, with practitioners including Tynan working to define its contemporary forms.
Tynan’s work, which incorporates elements and objects of childhood play, utilizes dollhouse and the process of dollhouse-making as distinct set piece referents, as well as elements of wishful or magical thinking, utilizing props such as crystal balls, tarot, and the costumery of clowns, baseball and other widely recognizable tropes of youthful play to distill his performances into cinepoetic flash fictions that trace an autobiographical, internal investigation into a childhood self that grows ever more distant as the artist enters a mature early phase of art-making, alongside a genre itself only just now leaving behind its earliest self-definitions and reliances on adjacent or intersecting forms.
RYAN TYNAN: ARTIST BIO
Ryan Tynan is a midwest based experimental film artist. Growing up in Indiana around horses and water, he was heavily inspired by the cowboy and garnered an interest in art + film in high school. After graduating from film school from Columbia College Chicago, he went on to create short experimental films, many categorized as Cinepoetry. Since 2016, multiple of his films have exhibited themselves in various film festivals, from the Chicago Shorts Festival to the Midwest Video Poetry festival and more. Furthermore, his art expands past the medium of filmmaking with a spoken word album, “Kidding” and a background in set decorating. Using these skills, his films often play around with certain mixed media approaches including miniature model making, editing techniques and original music production. His c.v. can be viewed here, and his artist website is available for viewing at ryantynanart.com.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Playing around with the ideas of childhood and channeling your inner child, my works retain this quality as an overarching string throughout. The imagery is frivolous and the performance almost always reflects the act of playing dress up as a kid and using toys as props. The spoken word in my work I consider to be anti-poetry, if you will. It is purposefully on the nose to the point where it becomes campy and the audience knows they are in on the joke. Acting also as the performer in my films, I welcome the viewer to laugh at me. This is as if I am a clown on display for your own amusement. The words themselves reflect my mental health struggles but are open enough for interpretation for anyone to relate to. This becomes the theme of my work, mental health. This is not only shown in the whimsical quality of the production design, but also in the expressions of my face and the silly words I say. These are films about my feelings, relationships, dreams and demons.
CURATOR BIO
Michael Workman is an artist, writer and reporter. In addition to his work at the Chicago Tribune, Guardian US, Newcity, and WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, Workman is also Director of Bridge, a Chicago-based 501 (c) (3) publishing and programming organization. His writing has been included in several anthologies, a special edition of the Notre Dame Review focusing on the work of participants in the &NOW Festival of Innovative Writing, and a 3-volume series of past writing, Perfect Worlds, at StepSister Press. His work has been presented at the MCA Chicago, Driehaus Museum, and the Evanston Art Center. Upcoming screenings of his cinepoems and experimental films include “Bad,Midwest Action” at the Figge Art Museum’s Alternating Currents Film Festival in August, and “Inside Streets” at the Evanston Experimental Video Showcase in September. michaelworkmanstudio.com