Ryan V. Brennan

Never Can Say Goodbye

Something Out of Nothing

Artist in Bathroom Residency (2009)
Month-Long “Live” Performance Installation

Spectators are presented with the illusion that the artist has confined himself inside the gallery’s bathroom with a months rationing of food and water. Viewers can watch him via a “live” video and audio feed routed from the bathroom into the gallery space. In an array of emotionally charged performances the solitary artist critiques the art world in a fanatical and existential whirlwind of crazed romanticism, tragedy and humor.

Bling Box Orchestra (2010)
A Hip Hop Retrospective, With the Assistance of DJ Select Inverse and Justin Ferranti; Courtesy of the Artist

Eight customized retro boom boxes play in synchronization, an amalgam of historically prominent Hip Hop songs. Club lights chase the sound as it bounces between boom boxes creating a 3-D environment of sound and light.

The sound composition is a survey of the genre’s nearly forty-year history, examining the many off shoots and sub-genres spawned over the years. Exploring the sample/appropriation phenomenon first advocated by Hip Hop, throughout the piece bits of songs are paired with the original source songs they sample. The sound is separated and conducted through eight boom boxes much like an orchestra; each individually producing a unique element for the composition yet completely in synch in tempo and key.

This orchestral survey comes to life through an array of colorful boom boxes; each adorned with customized paint, sticker and collage designs. Taking on an iconic precedence, theses symbols of Hip Hop become conduits creating an omni-sensorial environment celebrating a movement so veritably formidable to the contemporary world of music.