Artist Douglas Tausik Ryder is a pioneer in exploring mechanization, automation, and AI in his studio artwork, without outsourcing fabrication. “Your Myth Here” presents a series of five large-scale new works, which stand up to 9 feet tall. The monumental pieces explore the role of traditional sculptures and collective ideas within a society absorbed by mass media.
The artist’s first solo show at PRJCTLA showcases his new technique of collage and Artificial Intelligence with large-scale wooden sculptures, using unconventional and unique AI techniques and machinery.
When I lived in New York and Los Angeles, mass media in these environments became so immersive and pervasive, it felt like it was a singular reality. Here in rural England, without the surrounding noise, I realized the degree to which we are engulfed in mass media in the United States. I became curious about this. These new works are an exploration of the psychological and social effect of mass media.
Douglas Tausik Ryder
The artist further explains,
All of human experience and feeling is expressed one way or another in entertainment, in social media, or in advertising. It becomes like a window into the unconscious mind of the world. You have to arrest this lured vortex of fantastic images in order to look at it as a whole. I’m working in wood, but I’m trying to connect that very, very old tradition with the modern conversation. And that conversation to me is about automation and AI.
The artist’s new work adds to his established body of work in wood by adding collage generated with Stable Diffusion, an AI engine. He inputs and refines images with coding and search criteria from a cloud database. The images are further manipulated with more traditional technology, such as Photoshop, but then printed on etching paper and cut and collaged by hand. Some see Tausik Ryder as pioneering, or even first, in his complete control of the digital and analog processes. From coding industrial tools and generating AI seeds to tactile wood assembly and hand collage, he modernizes an ancient artform to create powerful visual metaphors.
Carl Berg, the founder of PRJCT LA says,
New techniques in art offer artists new opportunities of expression. Douglas brings the manufacturing process of industrial items into new fine art forms. When adding collage with AI techniques to traditional wood sculptures, there is a modern meaning as well as modern technologies merged with the ancient woodworking and sculptural tradition. These elements juxtapose each other in a visual and conceptual context to the past, present, and future with a layered variety of mediums that is unique to any other artist.
Using Artificial Intelligence in art can be fraught, and Tausik Ryder’s new exhibition, “Your Myth Here,” does not form a moral stance on the question of AI, but rather a philosophical questioning of its consequences.
Douglas Tausik Ryder“YOUR MYTH HERE”, March 11th, 2023 – April 22nd, 2023, Public Opening Reception: Saturday, March 11th, 3 p.m. – 7 p.m., PRJCTLA, 1452 E 6th St, Los Angeles, CA 90021, prjctla.com
About the artist
Douglas Tausik Ryder, an American artist, currently lives and works in England. His style abstracts traditional sculptural practices with cutting edge yet distorted technological practices. He pioneers creative techniques that investigate the effects of new technology. Since the beginning of his career, Tausik Ryder has produced work that explores the limits of technological art-making. His body of work dates back to 1992, with paintings that deployed billboard printing technology, which he further overpainted – evidence of his long preoccupation to master emerging technologies in service of a creative vision. Since 2005, his work has focused on drawings and sculpture realized in wood, bronze, and resin. His previous work distorting advertisements is what inspired his use of an AI engine to distort mass media for this new exhibition, “Your Myth Here.”
Douglas Tausik Ryder’s work has appeared at the LA Jason Vass Gallery, the Venice Biennial, Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY; and the University of Pennsylvania. His pieces are also in noted private collections including that of Tom Ford and Richard Buckley. douglastausikryder.com
