Spotlight Mark Ryden: Gay 90’s Old Tyme Art Show

The creme de la creme of the Pop Surrealism art world converged and mingled with NY art intelligentsia last Thursday at the much anticipated opening for Mark Ryden’s new exhibition The Gay 90s : Old Tyme Art Show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea. The show, based on imagery culled for the late 1800’s (as well as Ryden’s very particular visual vocabulary), is a homage to kitsch sentimentality and the way nostalgic longing can warp and effect actually memory and history.

Ryden usually suggests thematic attire for each opening (usually colors) and this time was no different, with the requested style being “Gay 90’s”. The crowd was varied, from peplums to polo shirts to Prada, but everyone exuberantly excited by the work. The crowd spilled out of the hot and humid gallery into the breezy streets, where everyone could catch a quick breather before heading back in to take another look at the monumental paintings, sublime watercolors, and drawing studies.

(view the gallery artwork preview here…)