RYAN LEE

About the Gallery
Founded in 2013 by Mary Ryan and Jeffrey Lee, RYAN LEE has established itself as a welcoming place of discovery and dialogue for art ranging from post-war art to the contemporary. Celebrating emerging and established artists and estates, the gallery takes a multi-generational approach to its programming, presenting innovative and scholarly exhibitions across all spectrums of art practices, including painting, photography, video, sculpture, and performance. The gallery takes chances on a wide variety of boundary-pushing artists; their work consistently transcends political, cultural, material, or technical boundaries. In addition, RYAN LEE has, throughout its history, demonstrated its long-standing interest and dedication to feminist, Black and Asian American, as well as queer narratives in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The gallery is led by partners of different generations and backgrounds with over six decades of combined experiences informing its unique approach.

About the Presentation
Tim Braden (b. 1975 Perth, Scotland) is an artist who works in both painting and sculpture, incorporating various techniques and materials across media. Using different types of paint, support, and application to explore subtle shifts in space, mood and tone, Braden’s work is ultimately drawn from a close reading of his environment and an attempt to depict the act of looking at things. He is continuously looking at and re-evaluating his own work in progress to align these observations, and he often combines patches of color and light to produce scenes that recall both the specificity of personal experience and nostalgia for another time and place.

Having spent time in the French Alps each year since he was young, mountain landscapes are a subject he has returned to regularly over the years; however, the new paintings created for Independent will be the first time he has organized a show around this alpine theme. Some of these paintings are inspired by Braden's own photographs. Some find their source in found images from recent years or older advertising imagery. Braden explains, "Once I have established a subject and there are some figurative works around me in the studio, I become more familiar with a subject and own it a bit. I’ll feel a bit freer to start inventing. Sometimes this might be taking areas of paintings and enlarging these ‘found’ abstract compositions into paintings."