Ryan Lee is pleased to present Holding Time, an exhibition of new work by Katy Stone, a leading artist of large-scale public commissions. This is Stone’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Working in aluminum and plexiglass, Stone creates hybrids of sculpture and painting that combine the visual language of organic forms with industrial materials. Each layered, cascading work consists of scores of drawn and hand painted gestures that seem frozen in a moment of falling, fluttering, waving, crashing, or exhaling. Holding Time suggests both motion and stillness, pausing in the space between longing for the past and longing to transcend time.

Continuing the artist’s connection to natural shapes and drawing conceptually on the rhythms of time, Stone invokes harvest phases, plant lifecycles, and the visual culture of the Victorian era as meditations on modern mourning and regeneration. The central work in the exhibition, Flag/Fall, is a monumental suspended sculpture whose black, liquid-like elements reference Victorian funeral garments, which were called “widow’s weeds.” The pearlescent Shadow (Bones) physically realizes the negative space of Flag/Fall, the two works positioned opposite each other as mirror images. The white plexiglass of Shadow (Bones) acts a counterbalance to the black aluminum of Flag/Fall.

Holding Time refers both to the sense of suspended motion in Stone’s work and to the futility of resisting change. Such duality is reiterated formally in the works’ simultaneous evocation of fragility and strength, ephemerality and durability. The installations on view illustrate the tension between the impulses to hold on, hold still, hold true, and the steady ticking of the clock.

Katy Stone (b. 1969 Rockford, IL) received her MFA from the University of Washington. She has exhibited widely, including at Boise Art Museum; Boston University Art Gallery; Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art; McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio; Missoula Art Museum; University of Richmond; and Watcom Museum of Art, Bellingham. Her work is held in the public collections of Boise Art Museum, City of Seattle, Iowa State University, McNay Museum of Art, Missoula Art Museum, and University of Michigan. Stone has completed major commissions at the Jackson Federal Courthouse, Jackson; The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas; Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Swedish Medical Center, Seattle; and Woodmont Library, Des Moines among others. Stone lives and works in Seattle.