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
RYAN LEE Gallery is pleased to present a new series of paintings by Tim Braden (b. 1975 Perth, Scotland) on the theme of alpine landscapes. This will be Braden’s debut at Independent. This new group of paintings is inspired by the artist’s regular hiking and research trips through the Swiss and French Alps, since his childhood. Braden worked from his sketches, watercolors, and
photographs, as well as drawing upon vintage travel advertisements and early twentieth century European painting.

Exploring 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. Braden’s oeuvre reflects a contemplation of the space between abstraction and figuration, often reworking enlarged fragments of his paintings as he explores the merging of feeling and form, memory and longing.

As inspiration for this new body of work, Braden looked at 1960s Sunset travel magazines from the American West, aimed at the aspirational middle class. Pages full of catchy advertising slogans for cruises to Alaska or camping trips to Yosemite promised a form of escapism from the (implied) conventionality of the readers’ daily lives. Not immune from the lure of this promise, these ideas seep into Braden’s paintings, infusing them with a sense of daydreaming nostalgia.

Reflecting on the long history of artists who painted mountain imagery, Braden draws inspiration from the work of Expressionist and Fauvist painters, including Gabrielle Munter, Alexej von Jawlensky, Albert Marquet, and Ferdinand Hodler. This can especially be seen in his inventive palette, as he takes advantage of the freedom of black and white source photos to re-imagine them
using his own exuberant colors. Expounding on historical references and personal memories, Braden’s work occupies the space between representational and abstract compositions.

A new monograph of Braden’s work is forthcoming from Anomie in November 2025.