Ryan McLaughlin:
Calcium Hat
April 2–May 7, 2022

Adams and Ollman is pleased to present Calcium Hat, a solo exhibition with Ryan McLaughlin. The exhibition includes a new suite of acrylic and gouache works onpanel along with a selection of small oil paintings.

McLaughlin’s paintings feature fragmented words and crumbled pictograms hovering against dusty visual fields that fuse interpretations of still-life, landscape, and abstraction. Toggling between subjective symbols and known signifiers, McLaughlin works to extract a complex coherence between psychic unease and disambiguated aesthetic pleasure. His rich and varied surfaces present an ostensibly traditional format, one grounded in color, texture, shape, but with chance registrations that simultaneously suggest and dissect the visual proposition. It is from this familiar locus that McLaughlin continues to build his idiosyncratic cache of signage that navigates a fugitive space between aesthetic tension, definition, and playful provocation.

Expanding on his 2017 exhibition with the gallery titled Prius Wig, McLaughlin’s new work channels concepts of augmented anatomy, artificial lighting, and modified botany, markers of our new era.

Ryan McLaughlin (born 1980, Worcester, MA where he currently lives and works) received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Solo exhibitions include Impreza Earth, David Petersen Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; TraffiQ, Laura Bartlett Gallery, London; Lacus PM, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Raisins, Laurel Gitlen, New York City; and Barbara (I and II) at Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin. McLaughlin’s work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at Metro Pictures, Sikkema Jenkins, both New York; Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Off Vendome, Dusseldorf.