Mark Ryden: Dodecahedron
I hope last night was the final Mark Ryden opening in NY I’ll ever have to miss due to health (a girl can dream!). Dodecahedron is now showing at the Paul Kasmin Gallery.
The show’s press release eloquently describes it:
The vocabulary of images in Ryden’s new body of work remains consistent with his pervasive distortion of scale and his iconic fairytale-like creatures set against seductive landscapes of untouched beauty.
However, the subject of his latest series is informed by the geometric structure “dodecahedron,” a solid figure bearing twelve sides whose perfect symmetry has been the source of extensive query by mathematicians and scientists since antiquity. Drawing upon the form’s mystery and divine connotations as a source of inspiration, Ryden explores the bridge between the physical world and the intangible realm.
Ryden’s labor-intensive canvases skillfully rework centuries of art history, combining the grandeur of Spanish and Italian religious painting with the decorative richness of Old Master compositions and the lush textures of French Neo-Classicism. Expanding on these concepts, the artist’s paintings focus on “the soul confronting its physical form” as represented by his reoccurring feminine child figure, he calls “anima” or “soul” figure.
Did anyone make it to the opening or plan to see the show in person?
SheWalksSoftly 
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