Each work is meant to exist as an independent entity, capable of generating different experiences over time
— Cordy Ryman
Cordy Ryman is an American artist whose practice operates at the intersection of painting, sculpture, and object-making. Working primarily with wood, acrylic paint, and other modest studio materials, Ryman produces works that resist fixed categorization, occupying a space between image and structure. His objects are neither paintings nor sculptures in a conventional sense, but constructed forms that emphasize process, material presence, and physical response.
Ryman’s practice is grounded in continuity and repetition. Over time, a stable set of materials and methods has allowed subtle shifts in form, rhythm, and structure to emerge across bodies of work. His approach is intuitive and accumulative: actions such as attaching, painting, cutting, stapling, and reworking generate compositions through sequences of decisions rather than through predetermined outcomes. As a result, the works register as open-ended and provisional, foregrounding causality and material interaction rather than resolution or finish.
Pattern and repetition play a central role in Ryman’s work, not as decorative devices but as structural rhythms. Motifs recur across individual objects and installations, creating visual coherence through variation. His exhibitions often establish dialogues between large-format works and smaller elements, allowing forms and gestures to circulate across scales and configurations.
Ryman’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, including presentations at MoMA PS1, New York; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami. He has realized several public commissions, including projects for Michigan State University (2013) and the New York City Department of Education at P.S. 11, Queens (2017). In 2006, he received the Helen Foster Barnett Prize from the National Academy Museum.
Ryman lives and works in New York.