Project Gallery: Matthew Ronay

Matthew Ronay produced a new installation for Pérez Art Museum Miami’s Patricia Papper Project Gallery adjacent to the museum’s main entrance. Best known for his sculptural work, Ronay creates beautifully crafted objects from wood, fabric, and clay, which range in scale from small free-standing and wall-based sculptures to immersive installations. He draws out the totemic and surreal qualities of objects through his distinctive use of form and color, which conjure traditions of non-western art making and American folk art, as well as spirituality and psychedelia. Ronay’s most recent works have seen him transforming the dark, muted palette of his previous pieces into bold, riotous colors that vibrate with glowing energy. Straddling a vocabulary married to modernist abstraction and ritualistic objects, Ronay’s sculptures move beyond language and image. They give primacy to the viewer’s experience, and reward close observation of the textured and vivid surfaces, orifices, and protrusions that comprise his otherworldly forms.