One early Saturday morning, before anyone else was up, when we were very little, we went to retrieve something from our closet. Upon opening the door we were confronted with the sound of intense tap dancing. To all physical appearance the space was motionless — stock still clothes and shoes — but emanating from the unmoving ordinariness was the distinct, staccato, tumult of tap dancing feet. For the briefest moment it was captivating but just as quickly we were horrified and ran from the room.
We never gleaned the origin of the noise — old pipes heard by an imaginative child? We did subsequently learn that a distant tenant ran a dance studio from the basement... In any case the lingering feeling was both sinister and comic.
We have encountered versions of this sensation in art (with some frequency) — thinking here of works like the latter paintings of Philip Guston and the witchier canvases of Lari Pittman — and now here with the paintings and sculptures of Ryan Browning.
Browning’s world seems a kind of horribly droll purgatory, a dimension where a pratfall, rather than being followed by an expected laugh track, prompts the sound of wheezing dungeon winds.
We never gleaned the origin of the noise — old pipes heard by an imaginative child? We did subsequently learn that a distant tenant ran a dance studio from the basement... In any case the lingering feeling was both sinister and comic.
We have encountered versions of this sensation in art (with some frequency) — thinking here of works like the latter paintings of Philip Guston and the witchier canvases of Lari Pittman — and now here with the paintings and sculptures of Ryan Browning.
Browning’s world seems a kind of horribly droll purgatory, a dimension where a pratfall, rather than being followed by an expected laugh track, prompts the sound of wheezing dungeon winds.