Ryan Lee is pleased to present Wood Waves, two monumental Hurricane wave triptychs printed on wood by photographer and multimedia artist Clifford Ross. Wood Waves, the artist’s second exhibition at the gallery, is concurrent with Light | Waves, a solo exhibition of Ross’s wood wave triptychs and large-scale Digital Wave installation at Parrish Art Museum on Long Island, New York. Light | Waves will be on view from July 16 through October 15, 2017.

Ross began the Hurricane series in 1996, marking a shift in his practice towards keenly observing the forms and movements of water. He captured the striking ocean waves by wading into the surf, tethered to shore, during severe storms on the East Coast. The resulting black and white photographs translate the power and dynamism of waves into still images in which the hyperrealistic details of the water often render nature abstract.

Wood Waves further the abstraction of the original Hurricane series by incorporating natural wood grains into the image, while also expanding the possibilities of the photographic print. Ross is perpetually on the forefront of inventing and reinventing both traditional and new media; in the 1990s, he created the highest resolution film camera, the R1, and he continues to develop new printing methods and other technological firsts in the photographic and moving image field. Wood Waves utilize an innovative technique of digitally printing images onto carefully selected panels of maple veneer. In its raw form, wood is a material rarely associated with photography, but here it realizes the tension between water and land. Wood Waves engage the physicality of the triptych, contrasting the texture and pattern of the maple with the foam and spray of the wave to produce an ultimate work that teeters between abstraction and figuration.

Clifford Ross (b. 1952 New York, NY) received his BA in Art and Art History from Yale University in 1974. Following an early career in painting and sculpture, Ross began his photographic work in 1994. He has since been the subject of solo exhibitions at Austin Museum of Art; BRIC House, Brooklyn; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House, Rochester; Guild Hall, East Hampton; MADRE/Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples; and Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, among others. In 2015, MASS MoCA presented Landscape Seen & Imagined, a mid-career survey of Ross’s large-scale photography and Digital Waves along with the publication of two fully illustrated companion volumes, Hurricane Waves and Seen and Imagined. Ross’s work is held in the public collections of International Center of Photography, New York; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, among others.