Scroll is pleased to announce Pink Noise, a presentation of new paintings by Ryan Dobrowski, and the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York.
The exhibition’s title refers to pink noise, the ambient, constant background sound that filters out many of life’s distractions. Like white noise, it’s a steady hum but lower pitch, using deeper sounds and lower sound waves to make it more gentle and soothing. Dobrowski’s paintings vibrate with the grounding effects of pink noise, his landscapes and still lifes capturing the serenity, solitude, and stillness of the grand American terrain. In Lone Swan, a solitary white swan floats through the ripples of a vast, golden pond. Moonlight Trail layers varying mark-making to build a hilly nightscape of a glowing moon illuminating the inky sea below. Short strokes and daubs staccato Dobrowski’s topographies to compose the leaves of towering trees, grassy fields of rolling hills, and ripples of calm waters. As a drummer, Dobrowski takes the repetition from this creative output and translates it into his painting, investigating the hypnotic effect of patterns and what can happen visually with repetition of mark-making. Humans are visually absent from the compositions, but it is easy to picture oneself immersed in the artist’s hazy atmospheres, standing still and listening to the waves lap onto the shore or the wind bristle through the leaves. In Tucson, Dobrowski paints primarily outdoors, tuning into the atmospheric sounds of his surroundings, which weave their way into the compositions of his work.
Early Modern painters are points of reference for Dobrowski’s work: the color and texture of Henri Matisse, the subject and form of Milton Avery, the soft and hazy still lifes of Giorgio Morandi. Elements of folk art – their simplicity, honesty, and flatness – emerge as well. The graphic, defined edges of classic woodblock prints also shine through. Dobrowski seamlessly and intuitively brings together these diverse influences to compose a singular, visual lexicon entirely his own.
Dobrowski keeps a sketchbook on himself at all times, always sketching, sometimes of a very specific place, sometimes of a vague memory. These thumbnail sketches serve as a launching point into his painting, which usually changes quite a bit as he constantly evolves, never trying to recreate anything completely the way it was once done. His drawings start very minimal, not really referencing anything, and Dobrowski builds off of this structure to bring back a humanness and personal experience into the final paintings. Since moving to the dry desert of Tucson from Oregon, Dobrowski constantly has his home state, its landscapes, trees, and water in mind, recalling the ecologies that aren’t present out in arid Arizona. His move also signaled a shift in his visual practice – out in the desert, the light, and accompanying energy, is completely different. Overlapping with the pandemic, when he was unable to perform and tour with his band, Dobrowski was able to turn his focus back towards painting and develop his own voice through consistent work. “Painting’s just great,” Dobrowski states, “I love it more and more all the time and can’t get enough of it.”
Ryan Dobrowski currently lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. He received his BFA in 2002 from the University of Oregon, Eugene. He has exhibited with La Loma Projects, Pasadena, CA; Snakebite Gallery, Tucson, AZ; Nancy Margolis Gallery; Sonya Gallery, New York; Ampersand Gallery, Portland, OR; and Imogen Gallery, Astoria, OR, among others. Dobrowski is also a founding member and percussionist of the indie folk band Blind Pilot. Their fourth studio album released August 2024, and they are currently touring through the end of the year.