This week the West Coast
Crew heads down to Ratio3 to talk to Ryan McGinley and gallerist Chris Perez.
Ryan McGinley makes large-scale color photographs of nudes in abstracted
natural landscapes. With his subjects as willing collaborators, he used photography
to break down barriers between public and private lives. Drawn from
skateboarding, music, graffiti and gay subcultures, his models perform for the
camera and expose themselves with complete self-awareness. McGinley's more
recent work signals a departure from the urban youth culture images for which
he is well known – over the past few summers he has been working almost
exclusively in natural settings in the American west. At 24, he was the
youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He
has also had solo exhibitions at PS1 and in Spain at the MUSAC in Leon. In 2007
he was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity award by the International Center
for Photography.