Trophy Modern

Ry Rocklen: Office Party

Join us at Jones Day, Clocktower's midtown office, for a celebration of Ry Rocklen's site-specific installation from his Trophy Modern series. Begun in 2013, the series consists of assemblages of mass-produced trophies, arranged to recreate iconic American objects and garner aesthetic appeal through a combination of clean, modernist lines with cheap, garish components. The name of the series acknowledges the work of modernist designers such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, who have inspired Rocklen.

Contrasting the organization’s history as an alternative art space with the surreal setting of a modern, 22nd floor corporate office, Rocklen’s installation serves as a functioning work space, with the oversized desk, chair, and lamp playing on both the elegance and excess of classic Americana.

Rocklen is represented by Thomas Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, Untitled in New York, and Praz-Delavallade in Paris. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, including in the Made in LA biennial at the Hammer Museum and the 2008 Whitney Biennial. The artist has also participated in exhibitions at LAX ART, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, BERNIER/ELIADES, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Venice Beach Biennial, and Art Basel Miami.

Ry Rocklen

Alanna Heiss and Joe Ahearn sit down with L.A. artist Ry Rocklen the day after his April 2014 opening at Untitled Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and discuss his work, process, obsessions, music, and how he got his name. Hear Rocklen describe the creation of his cast ceramic articles of clothing, his furniture line called Trophy Modern, his relationship to the L.A. music and performance scene and specially with Bouquet, the band of his partner Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, and how he got involved with Peter Norton's famous Christmas edition. From the gallery release: Constant in Rocklen’s practice is the paradoxical relationship between the familiar objects he selects and their distinguished treatments. Their subsequent ascension to dignity through porcelain casting, bronze plating, hand tiling and other mediums prive to timelessness most often transform easily destructed objects into durable monuments. In doing so, the treatments elevate the objects on display as well as evade particular, personal, distinctions. In casting the entirety of his own wardrobe, Rocklen has altered what was once his favorite collared shirt into the archetype of every three buttoned polo. What remains is the personal referent without the personal affect.