"Video Days" by Jason Bryant

“Behind the Curtain” is Flatiron’s Raandesk Gallery’s new show featuring the work of young artists Jason Bryant and Kevin Cyr. SPREAD ArtCulture was able to talk to Bryant about the show and his new work.

SPREAD ArtCulture: Tell us about your work in this show.

Jason Bryant: This work represents two histories in my life. For the past four or five years I’ve been doing these very tightly cropped film stills, film-noirish images from the thirties and fourties. Sort of an elegance and glamour. I was a skater for seventeen years and that will always be the most important development in my life as an artist and as a person, being within that culture. It’s a culture you never really remove yourself from and it’s something I really wanted to start bringing into my work in a way that would disrupt and create a harmony on my canvases at the same time.

"Motzek" by Kevin Cyr

SAC: What is it like to work from a classic photograph?

JC: I’ve always used photographs as my main source and I’ve always thrived to be a photo realist so what happens is I’ll have my source image and just draw it onto the canvas. I don’t project there is an abstraction that occurs, just as there is an abstraction in the photograph so it’s two levels of abstraction happening.