Casey Kaplan
ArtForum | Matthew Ronay | Nasher Sculpture Center
Matthew Ronay’s 2022 sculpture, The Crack, the Swell, an Earth, an Ode, is a polychromed puzzle of cut and textured wood. The roughly twenty-four-foot-long arrangement is segmented and cleverly linked together. One notices plenty of cheeky references to the human body, including breasts, lungs, googly eyes, tongues, splayed hands, and bean-like heads. Yet despite the simple gratification of recognizing these various appendages and organs, the most captivating moments are when Ronay’s vaguely coral-like objects only hint at more familiar things, such as gravity-weighted pillows, schools of swaying fish, or even illegibly scribbled words. When the forms are less overt the viewer begins to feel like a co-creator of the work, ensnared by a trap of interpretation that the artist has adeptly set and sprung.
Matthew Bourbon
To read the full article, visit the ArtForum website here.