P/D3 Project Space: 05.10

31.5.10

03.0

3G Mixed Reality Free Space (P/D3 Glitch Collage Studies), 2010, laser jet printed paper, ink, acrylic polymer emulsion and self-adhesive vinyl on corrugated cardboard, 7.5" x 9.25" (NFS original).

More information at : Society6
Photo reuse: all rights reserved.

24.5.10

04.0

The Importance Of Measuring Feet / The Needs Of The Business (P/D3 Glitch Collage Studies), 2010, laser jet printed paper, ink, acrylic polymer emulsion and self-adhesive vinyl on corrugated cardboard, 7.5" x 9.25" (NFS original).

More information at : Society6
Photo reuse: all rights reserved.

17.5.10

05.0

Post-Digital Tendencies Emerge (P/D3 Glitch Collage Studies), 2010, laser jet printed paper, ink, acrylic polymer emulsion and self-adhesive vinyl on corrugated cardboard, 7.5" x 9.25" (NFS original).

More information at : Society6
Photo reuse: all rights reserved.

3.5.10

06.0

Creating Circumstances 4 Error 2 Fill The System With Meaning (P/D3 Glitch Collage Studies), 2010, laser jet printed paper, ink, acrylic polymer emulsion and self-adhesive vinyl on corrugated cardboard, 7.5" x 9.25" (NFS original).

More information at : Society6
Photo reuse: all rights reserved.

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A Statement About The Art of Wayne Edson Bryan

Our burgeoning dependance on machine created perfection and instant digital communication is the starting point for Wayne Edson Bryan’s evocative compositions that explore our complex relationship with human fallibility and the arcane.

Favoring common office supplies over traditional fine arts materials, Bryan uses cut and pasted copier paper, ball point pens and self-adhesive vinyl letters to construct horror vacui collages reminiscent of the electronic glitch and signal loss static we occasionally experience, inadvertently create and wish to evolve beyond. The black and white images sourced from the internet that he painstakingly trims into strips and glues into patterns are created by or associated with computers as well as nano-technology, satellite imaging, physics, chemistry and molecular biology. By rendering depictions of technological error by hand, their human origin and attributes are amplified and become more endearing. Another result of Bryan’s manual manipulation is that the present day time frame visually communicated by the high-tech source material reverts to the appearance of being rooted in a steampunk-like past.

Just as meaning is implied by the use of letters and symbols but denied by their random arrangement, Bryan denies public access to his original physical artwork. Instead, the handmade works are exhibited exclusively in digital form on the internet. For the artist, the ascendence of the imitations of things, of our easy forgiveness of desirable data being dispensed through globalization’s filters means we’re indifferent to being denied the real. The only way one can physically experience Bryan’s works on this site by purchasing a print from Society6.

By transforming virtual information with the realness of the hand’s lack of precision and a metaphorical glitch-like error and then returning it to its native form, Bryan examines the boundary between realness and electronic distortion.

When bad art is good art

Now that we can make a 'perfect' design with a few mouse clicks the industrialised world is hankering for 'imperfect' designs. Artist and composer David Byrne on the importance of bad art.

Appropriated from the June 2003 issue of Ode Magazine

Bad design is good design. And tasteful good design, likewise, is bad. Not good-bad, just bad-bad. Now that 'perfect' design is possible with the click of a mouse, the industrialised world has become nostalgic for 'imperfect' design. As computer aided everything takes over our lives we begin to realise, little by little, what is missing from the high-tech world. We realise that a crooked line sometimes has more soul than a perfectly straight one, and that a recording that has just the right amount of distortion, and colour added by ancient equipment is often preferable to a perfect copy. Woe unto us when the medical profession perfects their newest genetic and cloning techniques! We might actually realise that our imperfections are what make us human. It is one thing to perfect typography, eliminating stat machines, lead type, and typesetting houses, but quite another to assume to perfect the organism that actually creates and consumes that typography. The endpoint of a mechanistic worldview is a world machine.

The easier it becomes to produce perfection, in design, grammar, rhythm, and pitch, the more those who have the earliest and easiest access to that perfection want to abandon it. In a kind of reverse snobbism Web designers and trendy magazine editors use the latest software programs to imitate the work of anonymous designers and artists... They use high-end computers to imitate the work of people who can't even afford a computer. These unsung artists are the sources of inspiration for programs such as PhotoShop, Illustrator, Quark, or Pro Tools, but never in their lives have they had access to, or even dreamed of, these tools. Such pathetic heroes can barely draw a more or less realistic face or carry a tune, forget about having access to spellchecker or auto-kerning their type.

As true perfection appears on the horizon, as the fruits of the enlightenment and of centuries of scientific progress appear within grasp, we take a bite of the perfected tomato or a huge flawless strawberry and realise that something has been lost. Flava. Soul. Humour. Funk.

The nostalgia for the [imperfect] design… is a pathetic attempt by sophisticates like myself to recapture that lost soul. We think that by imitating the look of something 'real' we might actually become more real ourselves. But for most the Faustian bargain has already been made. We can never actually be the man or woman who draws the shoes or the tacos on the kiosk walls, but we have certainly learned to appreciate the person who draws them. We can experience that weird but typical 21st-century sensation - loving something and laughing at it at the same time. The sophisticated designer leans back in his or her Aeron chair and employs in his or her design a slightly altered version of one of these drawings. They may also employ a variation on some of this type, knowing full well that their audience, the educated and sophisticated consumer, will know that the designer actually can draw a face, a shoe, or a car perfectly, realistically, easily, possibly aided by some computer program or other. But by purposely using 'bad' type there is a knowing wink going on between producer and consumer. A conspiratorial pact that says 'I know I can do better than this and you know I can do better than this, but don't we both like this for some strange reason.' This conspiratorial tone allows the consumer to feel that they are part of an elite club - paradoxically, a club to which the original sign painter will never belong. And the reason that both designer and consumer like this look is because it denotes soulful content. It implies that the work has the soul and life that is missing from goods produced by multinational corporations.

In the 19th century, as the technology of photography became more and more ubiquitous, artists quickly abandoned 'realistic' portrait and landscape painting in droves. Why compete with a machine that can do it more quickly, easily, and inexpensively than you? In short order, they had to unlearn their drawing lessons and abandon their technique. They learned to draw like a child, like a 'primitive,' a lunatic, or an unschooled draftsman. The wanted to capture the soul, the feeling, the sensation that the camera missed. They made virtual African art, virtual primitive art, and eventually even virtual advertising art - a form which had often imitated those same fine arts in its own efforts. Sometimes artists incorporated all these virtual styles at the same time. They made high art that looked like it was made by people who didn't know what they were doing. Or were doing what they were doing for vastly different reasons.

In a search for realness they made expensive luxurious homes that look like factories, warehouses, or industrially mass-produced sheds. Eventually those who could draw, print, or letter by hand abandoned all such efforts and the art schools even stopped teaching them. 'Good' design was so easy even your software could do it! 'Bad' design took skill and soul. Or at least virtual soul.

In time artists and designers began collecting examples of this 'authentic' design as items of inspiration. Little icons. Little shrines to those less schooled than they. The studio walls would be filled with photographs and clippings of signs and buildings like these. Their own work was good, but this was the 'real' thing. Unschooled, uncorrupted, and mostly unpaid.

Sure it is funny, the clunky layout and the sloppy painting on most of these images, but everyone knows that like these images a taco on the street tastes better than one from Taco Bell. And there lies the key.

Street tacos actually are better. They feel better and smell better. They are less perfect, less clean (certainly), less high-tech, and there are no groovy advertising campaigns to back them up. But the quesadilla con flores that one can order (during the right season) on the street, with a cold cervesa or home made jamaica is something that the perfection of a chain can never approach.

Perfection, one must conclude, is not actually perfect at all. In fact, it is almost the complete opposite. Perfection is bad. But bad is good. But bad perfection is not good, only good bad is good. It's all very simple.

When one sees a sign or a structure like those featured here, one assumes naturally that one is going to receive personal attention from the vendor, imperfect maybe, but without the cold bureaucratic attitude that accompanies the products of the globalised world. For these are stores, buildings, graphics, and shops from before and in spite of the best efforts of globalisation. These merchants will give you honest work, as opposed to work broken down and compartmentalised by some foreign 'expert.' Woe to us a society managed by 'experts.'

If these works are authentic, real, true, human - what then are the works made using sophisticated software programs, elegantly designed and with beautiful tasteful graphics? Are they inauthentic because they are well done? Is perfection not also real? Is not the antiseptic globalised world just another kind of real? Isn't a false thing that everyone believes in then a real thing? And of course isn't it the real that many of these self-taught artists and sign makers aspire to? Aren't they just dying to be corrupted?

Well, it might all be a matter of semantics, but if one is to assume that "real" infers having some basis in life and living as we know it, then, yes, the products of globalisation are not, in fact, real. They are imitations of things that are real, which in fact the march of globalisation seeks to irradiate. They are cleaned up versions of these funky kiosks, mom and pop stores, imaginative works of architecture and signage. And the global wave would wash away all of these originals, and leave only their copies. A kind of pod people world. The ad campaigns and copy of the corporate products point at these places in their references to 'home cooked flavour' and ads featuring happy families, but they only refer to these places as icons, they don't actually contain that home cooked flavour. They aren't even a good simulation.

The new attitude expressed toward the crummy artefacts featured here is that they are evidence of the resistance of the real to the unreal. If the unreal at various points and places around the world manages to completely obliterate the real, as it has done in many parts of the industrialised countries, then the real itself will eventually become merely a memory, a quaint story, a picture in a book of something that no longer exists. Colonial Williamsburg, Main Street USA, or Warwick Castle. The real is unreal in many places because it is no longer there. I guess this book is an attempt to reintroduce it into the culture, admittedly in a foreign strain, but one must use what one has at hand if no other material is available.

The faster and greater the spread or globalisation, neo-liberalism, and multinational corporations, the greater the nostalgia for that which they replace. We must memorialise the anonymous artists in this book, and in others, because their work is in danger of disappearing. It is beautiful. It reminds us that underneath the slickness and the logos there are still human beings.

Wayne Edson Bryan's work has been exhibited at:

American University Museum - Washington DC, Arlington Arts Center, Artist Alliance Gallery - Tampa, Boca Raton Center for the Arts, Brody's Gallery - Washington DC, Cleveland Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Museum - Houston, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Daimaru Museum, Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, Gallery K - Washington DC, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center - Buffalo, Hand Workshop - Richmond, Hokkaido Obihiro Museum of Art, Honolulu Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art - Boston, International Museum of Modest Arts - Sete, Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art, The Jakarta Arts Center, Kaoshiung Municipal Museum, Maryland Arts Place, McLean Project for the Arts, Meridian International Center - Washington DC, Mint Museum of Art, Mitsukoshi Museum of Art - Fukuoka, Museum of Fine Arts - Hanoi, Museum of Fine Arts - Ho Chi Minh City, New York Historical Society, The Painting Institute - Shanghai, Philbrook Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, Rockville Arts Place, San Jose Museum of Art, School 33 Art Center - Baltimore, Shin-kon Museum, The Singapore Museum of Art, Sogo Museum of Art - Yokohama, Taipei Municipal Museum, Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Tampa Museum, Tennessee State Museum, Washington Project for the Arts, and The Working People's Cultural Palace - Beijing.

Resume

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2010

P/D3 Project Space, http://pd3projectspace.blogspot.com/

1999

Perfect/Defect, Gallery K, Washington, DC, October 1 - 30.
1998
WEB, Gallery K, Washington, DC, May 1 - 30.
1997
Top, Gallery K, Washington, DC, March 4 - 29.
1996
Purple Portion, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY, March 9 - April 20, curator: Sara Kellner.
1995
Win, Gallery K, Washington, DC, October 31 - November 25.
1995
Gold Diggers, Back Stabbers and Game Players: Ten Years of Creating Art Inside the Beltway, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 12 - November 13.
1993
The Purple Gang, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC, September 17 - November 20.
1991
Trickster, Brody's Gallery, Washington, DC, May 2 - 25.
1990
Paranoias, Brody's Gallery, Washington, DC, June 1 - 30.
1989
Beyond Language, Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA, September 15 - October 28.
1988
New Works, Gallery 4, Alexandria, VA, January 23 - April 16.
1982
some more Silly Ritual Icons, Artist Alliance Gallery, Tampa, FL, October 15 - November 6.
1978
Fossils, USF University Center Art Gallery, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, November 13 - 17.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2010

CATALYST, American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC, November 9 - December 19, (catalog), curator: J. W. Mahoney.

2008
Collectors Select, Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA, January 29 - March 29, (catalog), curators: Jeffry Cudlin and Philip Barlow.
2006
Remembering Marc & Komei, American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC, January 18 - March 12, (catalog), curator: Jack Rasmussen.
2001
King Size, International Museum of Modest Arts, Sete, France, June 21 - October 31.
2000
Strictly Painting III, McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA, June 8 - July 22, juror: Terrie Sultan.
2000
New American Paintings: Juried Exhibitions in Print, Number 27, The Open Studios Press, April - May, juror: Howard Fox.
1999-00
Outward Bound: American Art on the Brink of the 21st Century,Meridian International Center, Washington, DC, May 25 - July 11, Internationally traveled, (catalog), curators: Nancy Matthews, Bill Dunlap and Pamela Maslansky.
1996
ArtSites 96, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore, MD, May 29 - July 27, (catalog), curator: Claudia Amory.
1994-98
Elvis + Marilyn: 2 X Immortal, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, November 2 - January 5, Internationally traveled, (catalog), curator: Wendy McDaris.
1994
Painting '94, Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA, January 22 - March 5, juror: Donald Kuspit.
1992
WPA in the Hemicycle, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, June 5 - 28.
1991
Washington on the Edge: New Painters, Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History, Danville, VA, January 12 - July 3, Traveled, (catalog), curator: Thomas W. Jones.
1991
Mid-Atlantic/NEA Regional Painting Fellowship Winners, Johnson & Johnson World Headquarters, New Brunswick, NJ, January 1 - December 31, Traveled.
1990
Options 1990, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC, January 4 - February 24, (catalog), curators: Jock Reynolds and Alan Prokop.
1990
Mixing It Up: Artist's Designs And Fashions, Rockville Arts Place, Rockville, MD, October 7 - November 10, curator: Alice Denney.
1980
Tampa Bay '80, Tampa Museum, Tampa, FL, July 1 - August 30, (catalog), juror: Graham W. J. Beal.
1979
Fourth Annual USF Juried Art Exhibition, USF Art Gallery, Tampa, FL, March 11 - April 7, juror: Jane Livingston.
1978-79
Souvenirs of Florida: The South Florida Silver Portfolio, USF Art Gallery, Tampa, FL, September 26 - January 30, Traveled, curator: David Yager.
1978
Third Annual USF Juried Art Exhibition, USF Art Gallery, February 20 - March 24, juror: Marcia Tucker.
1978
IBM Abstract Art Show, Boca Raton Center for the Arts, Boca Raton, FL, January 8 - February 3, juror: Janet Folsum.

SCHOLARSHIPS, AWARDS AND GRANTS

2001
Awarded Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship.
1999
Grant awarded by The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc.
1994
Awarded commission to create art for Washington National Airport by architectural firm Cesar Pelli & Associates, Inc.
1990
Awarded Mid-Atlantic/NEA Painting Fellowship.
1989
Awarded commission by the Student Loan Marketing Association (Sallie Mae) to create art for their Washington, DC offices.
1989
Awarded First Place for Painting, Virginia Commission for the Arts Prizes for the Visual Arts.
1978
Awarded First Place Prize by Janet Folsum in IBM Abstract Art Show.
1977
Awarded Syd Solomon Scholarship.
1975
Awarded Boca Raton Center for the Arts Scholarship.
1974
Awarded First Place Prize in Florida State Fair Art Scholarship.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

CATALYST: 35 Years of Washington Project for the Arts. Exhibition catalog. Forewords by Jack Rasmussen. Essays by J.W. Mahoney, Jock Reynolds and Robin Moore. Copyright, 2010 Washington Project for the Arts.

Collectors Select. Exhibition catalog. Forewords by Claire Huschle and Jeffry Cudlin. Essays by Philip Barlow, Julian Fore, Philippa Hughes, Daniel Levinas, Heather & Tony Podesta and Henry Thaggert. Copyright, 2008 Arlington Arts Center.

P/D2: A New Strain. Exhibition catalog. Essay by Ferdinand Protzman. Copyright, 2002 Wayne Edson Bryan.

J. W. Mahoney. "Wayne Edson Bryan at Gallery K." Art in America,Volume 88 - Number 6 (June 2000): 130.

J. W. Mahoney. "The Capital of Nostalgia: Washington DC..." New Art Examiner, Volume 27 - Number 4 (December 1999 - January 2000): 30 - 35.

Ferdinand Protzman. "In the Sweet Buy and Buy." Washington Post,October 14, 1999, p. C5.

Outward Bound: American Art in the Brink of the 21st Century.Exhibition catalog. Text by Eric Gibson, Nancy Matthews, Bill Dunlap and Pamela Maslansky. Copyright, 1999 Meridian International Center.

Sue Allison. "Area Artists at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport." Washington Review, Volume XXIV - Number 3 (October - November 1998): 3 - 10.

George Howell. "Wayne Edson Bryan: WEB." Art Papers, Volume 22 - Number 5 (September - October 1998): 37 - 38.

Ferdinand Protzman. "WEB, a Show That Steps Out of Line."Washington Post, May 14, 1998, p. C5.

Benjamin Forgey. "Airport Art That Soars." Washington Post,February 1, 1998, p. G2.

Stephen May. "Strokes of Genius." Washington Flyer, Volume 8 - Number 6 (July - August 1997): cover, 28 - 29.

Ferdinand Protzman. "The New National - 10 Artworks You Shouldn't Miss..." Washington Post, July 16, 1997, p. F14 - F15.

Ferdinand Protzman. "Ulterior Motifs." Washington Post, March 15, 1997, p. H2.

Jean Lawlor Cohen. "Up To Old Tricks." Where/Washington, March 1997, p. 24.

Jacqueline Trescott. "Landing First-Class Art." Washington Post,June 18, 1996, p. B1 & B6.

John Dorsey. "Humor clearly has it's place..." Baltimore Sun, June 1, 1996, p. D1.

Richard Huntington. "All Together Now." The Buffalo News/Gusto,March 29, 1996, p. 35.

Matthieu Victor. "Neurodisney." Artvoice, Volume 7 - Issue 7 (March 27 - April 10, 1996): cover, 1 - 2.

The Useful Art of Wayne Edson Bryan. Exhibition brochure. Text by Grant Samuelsen. Buffalo: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 1996.

Ferdinand Protzman. "A Doubly Singular Vision." Washington Post,November 4, 1995, p. C2.

Jean Lawlor Cohen. "Pop Goes The Easel." Where/Washington,November 1995, p. 27.

Elvis + Marilyn: 2 X Immortal. Exhibition catalog. Text by Wendy McDaris, David Halberstam, Thomas McEviley, Geri DePaoli, Kate Millett, Bruce Heller, Alan C. Elms, Richard Martin, John D. Baskerville, Lucinda Ebersole and Gary Vikan. Copyright, 1994 Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. and DB&A Exhibition Management, Inc.

Lee Fleming. "Gallery K's Familiar New Faces." Washington Post,April 9, 1994, p. B2.

Anne J. Banks. "Three Exhibitions..." Washington Review, Volume XIX - Number 4 (December 1993 - January 1994): 23.

Lee Fleming. "Doug Brown and Wayne Bryan: Team Works."Washington Review, Volume 17 - Number 5 (February - March 1992): 3 - 7.

Washington on the Edge: New Painters. Exhibition catalog. Text by Thomas W. Jones. Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History, 1991.

Ann Glenn Crowe. "Objects d'Art: Contemporary Folding Screens."Art Papers, Volume 15 - Number 1 (January - February 1991): 65.

Patrick Finnegan. "Wayne Edson Bryan, Brody's Gallery."Contemporanea 21 (October 1990): 103.

Michael Welzenbach. "The Sculpture Standouts." Washington Post,June 9, 1990, p. B2.

J. W. Mahoney. "Options 1990, Washington Project for the Arts."New Art Examiner, Volume 17 - Number 11 (Summer 1990): 39 - 40.

Patrick Finnegan. "Washington." Contemporanea 16 (March 1990): 41.

Options 1990. Exhibition catalog. Text by Jock Reynolds and Alan Prokop. Washington, DC: Washington Project for the Arts, 1990.

Patrick Finnegan. "Wayne Edson Bryan, Arlington Arts Center." New Art Examiner, Volume 17 - Number 5 (January 1990): 44 - 45.

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Capital One, Richmond, VA.

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Accenture, Reston, VA.

KPMG Consulting, Tysons Corner, VA.

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington, DC.

National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD.

City Hall Art Collection, Washington, DC.

Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, VA.

Life Technologies, Inc., Rockville, MD.

Sallie Mae, Reston, VA.

Artery Organization, Inc., Washington, DC.

Thank You

I would like to thank my wonderful wife, Cathy, for her never ending encouragement and tireless support to help me find fulfillment through the art making process. For close to a year she did more than her share to take care of me while I was busy obsessing over these artworks. Thank you to my oldest friend, George Holzer, for bringing his masterful skills with high quality digital printing to the table, allowing me to see these works in a new larger format.

Thanks to Ant Scott for his kindness, friendship, vision and leadership in the glitch aesthetic movement. With several scholarly collaborators and dozens of contributors, Ant has elevated the conversation about the role of defect in visual art with a new book: Glitch: Designing Imperfection. I would also like to especially thank "Subliminal"Jay, whose generous spirit and boundless creative energy inspired me to step out of the land of observers and get back into the world of makers.