Ryan Arthurs

Ryan Arthurs is a visual artist based in Buffalo, New York. His work as an artist and photographer often incorporates found objects that create real, material bridges to other people’s private lives: old discarded photographs, military service items, rusty things from another time. Now, with so much of our lives lived digitally, what we leave behind is more immaterial yet frequently much more public, hidden in plain sight in browsing histories and on social media platforms. [1]

He received his M.F.A. in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and holds a B.F.A. in Studio Art from Carleton College. Arthurs was a visiting professor at Carleton College, and a photography teaching assistant at Harvard University. He was a printmaking Artist-In-Residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado and The Bothy Project, Isle of Eigg in Scotland.

Ryan has taught photography classes at Carleton College and a course at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He was also a photography teaching assistant at Harvard University in the Visual and Environmental Studies department from 2013-2016 working with artists Sharon Harper, David Hilliard, Mike Mandel and Matt Saunders.

Arthurs’ work has been exhibited widely, including “The National: Best Contemporary Photography” at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana. His solo exhibitions credits include Carleton College and Room 68 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His work was selected by The Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Top 100 in 2018. In 2017 he was shortlisted for the Oseroff Memorial Purchase Prize administered by CEPA Gallery, and in 2015 was nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Award.  

Arthurs is also a founding member of Houseboat Press, a photography publishing company that has exhibited at both national and international art book fairs including; OFFPRINT Paris, the LA Art Book Fair, Aperture Foundation New York, and the Yale Museum of Art, New Haven.

When discussing his 2019 project, T41l Cod3, Arthurs stated:

"Language is my weapon of choice. Sometimes it's stealthy, cloaked in the familiar and other times it's more obvious to communicate the point. I've been creating coded phrases using military aircraft magazines from the 1950-80s. The collage elements have been scanned and printed on aluminum, via a dye sublimation process, as to mirror the materials of the aircraft. The coded, queer phrases, are familiar to explicit vanity license plates and message boards of the gay community. These phrases have evolved with digital technology and hook-up apps, like Craigslist, Grindr, etc. Text speak, or leet talk, has become apart of our vernacular language IRL. I'm using the alpha-numeric style of military tail codes to form the phrases that contain multiple meanings, while also being visually obscured within the elements of the collage."

In 2020 Arthurs founded RIVALRY PROJECTS and serves as Director and Curator. Rivalry is founded on his competing motivations as an artist and curator to create an arts space that can function as both a site of exhibition and production of contemporary art. Rivalry exhibits emerging, mid-career and underrepresented artists working in all media, but with an emphasis toward contemporary photography.

[1] Artist statement: https://www.ryanarthurs.com/cornelia-magazine