Douglas Tausik Ryder (1954) is an American artist whose organic, sensual style is a tension between geometry and nature. In his body of work, Tausik Ryder responds to the digital age with conceptual, digital, and analog practices about structural and surface decisions. Technological advancement has always been at the center of art-making but never more so than today. Tausik Ryder’s technology-assisted art making responds through a pioneering creative process, which delivers expressive, crafted sculptures. Through his innovative work, He ignites a dialogue about what art is now and what it will be in the future.
His new solo show “Body Language” references European, American and Californian art-makingand carries them into the future. Body Language features heroically scaled Cherrywood laminations that limn bodies and nature merged with the technical means of production. Tausik Ryder’s aesthetic goals oscillate from body to spirit and back again.
Tausik Ryder’s work lies at the intersection of conceptual art, traditional art, industrial processes, and technology driven art-making. Source materials include drawings, scans, photographs and machine stereography (.STL) files. In 1992 he first started using industrial and technological processes in novel ways to create art. Since 2005, his work has focused on drawings and machine assisted sculpture realized in wood, bronze and resin.
His sculptures are CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machined after a series of creative interventions, then painstakingly assembled and hand-finished. His trial and error methods push against digital and industrial limitations informed by his decades of exploration in this area. Consequently, the new work is his most commanding yet. Understandably, gallery goers focus on his expressive sculptural forms, however, Tausik Ryder’s process is what creates the emotion, form, innovation and erotic charge.
Some see Tausik Ryder as pioneering, or even first, in the use of code to drive technology-assisted sculpture making. He is the only artist to own an industrial CNC machine tool, which means his pieces are created without any outside fabrication. Depicting female forms in today’s world can be fraught however, this work is much more about female experience than the male gaze.
“Venus,” a public sculpture by Tausik Ryder, was recently installed in Grand Park in Irvine, CA. Tausik Ryder sees all his new works as “proposals” to be scaled up into large-scale public art that people can engage with, offering a meaningful experiential interaction. In 2020, one of his sculptures will be shown as part of the European Cultural Center’s exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2020.
His work has been shown previously at Jason Vass, Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY; and the University of Pennsylvania. His pieces are also in noted private collections including that of Tom Ford and Richard Buckley. A native New Yorker, he now resides in Los Angeles, CA and Shelter Island, NY with his wife and daughter.