Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present By the time the rain comes, we will be home, an exhibition of new work by Donyel Ivy-Royal, marking his first with the gallery following the announcement of his representation earlier this year. Moving between the familiar and the elusive, the presentation brings together oil paintings, ink drawings, and a large-scale installation.
Donyel Ivy-Royal’s practice is shaped by the spaces he has lived in and traversed through, from weathered walls and urban sprawls to trees, mountains, and open landscapes. The sceneries of the Northwest, alongside the underground music, poetry, and art scenes in which Ivy-Royal is deeply immersed, inform the inherently multi-disciplinary nature of his practice.
Galvanized by these communities and spaces that make up his world, Ivy-Royal oscillates between painting, construction, observation and invention. Photographs taken in different cities he has called home, urban scenes perceived in passing, and instants shared with friends and collaborators can serve as starting points for paintings that often bear little resemblance to their source. The process of layering paint on a canvas, filling in a graffiti tag, or writing a poem holds equal weight in Ivy-Royal’s practice. Each unfolds through gestures and repetitions, reflecting the shifting perspectives through which he observes and interprets his surroundings.
At the center of the gallery, Ivy-Royal transforms a dividing wall into an architectural facade, incorporating a fresco alongside a range of materials gathered from the studio and the street. These varying surfaces come together in a construction that is at once familiar and unexpected, drawing on memories of the different walls he grew up drawing on. Extending his interest in the life of images beyond the canvas, the installation alters the way the surrounding space is encountered, bringing the exhibition’s varying materials and modes of making into a single environment.
Jack Shainman