Cloud Gallery is pleased to present Ryan Woodring: Electric Park. February 12 through March 29, 2015. Ryan Woodring is a Portland-based artist and founder of Prequel Professional Development Program for Emerging Artists. Although he has shown extensively, this will be his first solo show in Seattle.

The artist will be present at the reception on Thursday, February 12 from 5 – 8 p.m.

Ryan Woodring sources amateur videos of amusement rides originally made for an anonymous YouTube audience in order to create layered, sculptural paintings. In Electric Park he explores theme-park riders stuck aboard stalled rides, with the rides’ breakdown splintering the one-track narrative of modern machinery into thousands of more ambiguous but ultimately more personal vignettes.

“These paintings focus on the unstructured experiences of stopped rides. This stoppage time allows the rider the ability to focus on previously unseen scenery; ceilings, exit signs, flights of stairs, pathways to nowhere. It also affords them an uncomfortable power of agency, in what was supposed to be a controlled experience assimilates to this glitch.”

Woodring works as a visual effects artist at Laika, on films such as the Oscar-nominated Boxtrolls. He has taught painting at Carnegie Mellon’s Precollege Art Department, was a mentor for Brewhouse Distillery Artist Residency program in Pittsburgh and currently teaches animation at Hollywood Theatre, in Portland.

ryanwoodring.com

Cloud gallery is located in Frame Central on the corner of Pike and Broadway in Capitol Hill at 901 East Pike St, Seattle. Regular gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. Saturday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Sunday 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Admission is free to the public.