Ryan James MacFarland’s exhibition: Tide Study at the Charles Bank Gallery, New York

In Ryan James MacFarland’s new show Tide Study at the Charles Bank Gallery, the artist shows a concern for
the seemingly intangible and transitory qualities of landscape.
Whether subtle shifts in pattern caused by wind blowing across the
surface of a lake, or the heavy chop of a bay as high tide approaches,
his two triptych works explore the disparity between the visible and
symbolic strength of water and the invisible powers that control it.
While the constant gravitational pull of the moon on the earth’s
bodies of water can have tremendous, often global effects, it remains
something one ordinarily does not feel or notice. In another series
called Daymoons, MacFarland records a different, but less frequent,
phenomenon – the appearance of the moon before nightfall. Through
capturing this evanescent quality of nature, paired with the distant
graininess of his well-known and ever-present subject, the resulting
works feel equally ephemeral and perpetual.
MacFarland’s goal with the Tide Study is to expose to his viewers to what
we can see, but don’t feel; what we know, but don’t understand. By
reducing the vast complexities of nature into a single moment, in a
single frame, they can begin to be deciphered. 

On show from July 12 to August 19 at the Charles Bank Gallery, 196 Bowery, NY 10012, New York. Photo Ryan James MacFarland

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