Ry David Bradley at Tristian Koenig / SYDNEY


RY DAVID BRADLEY | NOT TO BE DIGITIZED

Tristian Koenig

SYDNEY POP-UP EXHIBITION

16/12 -  20/12/2015

ADDRESS: 
'THE COMMUNE' 
1/160 ROCHFORD STREET, 
ERSKINEVILLE, NSW 2043









Tristian Koenig is delighted to announce the opening of Not to Be Digitized - a solo exhibition of new work by Ry David Bradley. Combining archival images from the New York City Library's 'Pictures Collection' with Bradley's use of dye-transfer and spray paint onto synthetic suede and silk, the exhibition will present a site-specific installation of two-sided 'postcard' paintings.

NTBD (Not to be Digitized) is site-specific installation of new two-sided paintings based on postcards of Australia by Melbourne-born, New York-based Ry David Bradley. Coming across the hand written note ‘Not to be Digitized’ on a cupboard within the New York Public Library’s ‘Pictures Collection’, Bradley was intrigued as to what lay inside. The Pictures Collection is an unparalleled visual resource, containing well over one million original prints, photographs, posters, postcards and illustrations from books, magazines, newspapers and classifieds. It's a global collection, indexed across 12,000 subject headings. That said, the postcards weren’t catalogued, or indeed collated, in any specific manner.

It led Bradley to reflect on the manner in which similar communiques are undertaken today. Primarily digital, traversing in encrypted binary and existing ‘virtually’, today’s postcards can’t be placed on the fridge - Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and other forms of contemporary communication apps and technology have supplanted the postcard, yet still the postcard persists.

It’s maybe similar to how paintings are considered anachronistic?


Ry David Bradley (b. 1979, Melbourne) completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Melbourne in 2013. In 2009 he started the blog PE (Painted Etc.), which documented the emergent trend of post-internet painting that served as the model for well-known blog PAINTFX. Recent exhibitions include Not a Photo, The Hole, New York; Windoes, The Composing Rooms, Berlin; Where Do You Want To Go Today, Brand New Gallery, Milan; Access All Areas, Bill Brady, Kansas City; Border Protection, Tristian Koenig, Melbourne and Picture Movement (with Thomas Jeppe), Utopian Slumps, Melbourne. Bradley’s work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, The Aldala Collection, United States and Proclaim Collection, Melbourne, as well as private collections in North America, Europe and Australasia.