Untitled (Shapes)

Best known for his celebrated performance piece Battleground, staged at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in May 2016, Ryan McNamara is fascinated by the medium of dance. Inspired by the MTV music videos he devoured during his youth, the artist has developed a unique situation-specific practice which frequently involves the viewer as well as professional dancers and artists. ‘Performance is inherently subversive in that the presenting institution cannot guarantee what is going to happen’, he claims; this was made especially salient in a 2010 performance commissioned by Louis Vuitton, in which McNamara licked the brand’s signature luxury handbags until they were coated in saliva. (LV subsequently destroyed the handbags.) The present work was made during McNamara’s first solo gallery show Still in 2012, which required visitors to participate in the construction of new performance stills whilst engaging an arsenal of props and costumes, all directed by the artist. Photographs of their poses were then découpaged onto the props and backdrops used in the performance, turned into sculptures and paintings in media res which were displayed in the show’s second half.