RYAN AND TREVOR OAKES
“It’s a luxury to be able to think things through from two perspectives and tackle them with four hands.”
“You could say we are observationists, perhaps even meta-observationists, in that we’ve spent a lot of time observing the act of observation.”
Interview by Amanda Quinn Olivar, Editor
New York City-based artists and collaborators Ryan and Trevor Oakes (b. 1982, Boulder, CO) create works that deal with time, space, and human perception.
The brothers' art is in numerous public collections, including MoMA, The Getty, Chicago’s Field Museum, the New York Public Library, and the North Dakota Museum of Art. They show with Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York and have exhibited at Mass MoCA, Millennium Park, the National Museum of Mathematics, The Drawing Center, and the Palazzo Strozzi museum in Florence, Italy, among others.
They recently began a new series of curved oil paintings.
Amanda Quinn Olivar: To begin with, why do you make art?
Trevor: To translate epiphanies into physical form.
Ryan: To show more than the eye can see.
AQO: Tell me about your backgrounds, and when your artistic partnership began.
Trevor: As identical twins, I suppose our artistic partnership began at birth. We’ve always been best friends and worked as a team.
Ryan: Our high school art teacher once told us it was cheating to work together, but for us it was a natural thing to do. It’s a luxury to be able to think things through from two perspectives and tackle them with four hands.
Trevor: As for our backgrounds, we were born in Boulder, Colorado and moved around several times as children, from Colorado to Wisconsin to Virginia to West Virginia, before we ended up in New York City for college. We’ve been in the city ever since.
The Oakes Brothers on chimneys in the East Village, 2001, photogravure etching, 8 x 10 inches. Photo: Alva Mooses.
AQO: How would you describe your subject matter?
Trevor: Early on, our works were pure investigations of emergent form, and included paintings composed through a systematic rolling of hand-made brushes and sculptures made of matchsticks or pipe-cleaners or corrugated cardboard.
Ryan: Some of the ideas we stumbled upon in these early works unexpectedly prescribed a trajectory that led us to thinking a lot about light and human vision. And that trajectory developed into a series of concave drawings and paintings that have become our main focus to this day.
Synchronized Field: Aqua, 2011, shellac ink, vinyl acrylic, cotton paper, 62 x 42 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Synchronized Field: Blue, 2010, shellac ink, vinyl acrylic, cotton paper, 43 x 34 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Pipe-Cleaner Sculpture, 2004, pipe-cleaners, fractal weave algorithm, 36 x 36 x 12 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
AQO: What is the ideology behind your practice… Has perspective always been a part of your vocabulary?
Trevor: Our ideology is rooted in analysis and keen observation. You could say we are observationists, perhaps even meta-observationists, in that we’ve spent a lot of time observing the act of observation.
Ryan: Perspective has not always been part of our vocabulary; rather, our primary interest has been in investigating the nature of human vision, because sight and seeing are integral to the human condition. The phenomenon of diminishing perspective, where things appear to shrink as they recede from you, is a byproduct of the spherical shape of human vision.
Have No Narrow Perspectives: Field Museum, 2009, pigment ink, cotton paper, 20 x 21 x 10 inches. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
AQO: Is your work intended to imitate the curvature of the eye? Talk about your investigation into perceptions of light and space.
Ryan: Our investigation into the perception of light and space has always been rooted in building things physically, as well as paying keen attention to our visual experiences.
Trevor: The curve of our canvas is sculpted in response to the curve of the eye, yes, and to the reality that our eyes see the space surrounding them by gathering a radially fanned-out cluster of light rays.
Ryan: Recognizing this shape—the radially fanned-out formation of rays that collectively enter the eye—was germinal to our investigation. It grew organically out of an early sculpture made of matchsticks.
Trevor: We glued approximately 9,000 matches together with all the heads on one side and all the sticks on the other. The idea was to see what shape they would naturally form. When they gradually emerged into a dome with the matches fanned out around the dome’s center, it triggered the realization that light rays entering the eye, like these matchsticks, also fan out radially, but around our pupils.
In other words, the objects in the environment around you may be irregularly shaped, but the shape of the light rays your eye gathers in order to see them is always this perfect radial splay. And that splay has significant implications for how space appears. For instance, the familiar characteristic of diminishing perspective, where objects seem to shrink as they recede, is a byproduct of gathering radially fanned-out light rays. If the human eye had evolved to gather rays in parallel formation, objects would not seem to shrink as they move away from the eye.
Ryan: This way of thinking about light and sight informs many of our decisions about what we choose to render, how we frame it, and in what style we draw or paint it.
Matchstick Bowl, 2002, wooden kitchen matchsticks, acrylic glue, 6 x 11 x 11 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Bond Street Terrace, 2014, pigment ink, cotton paper, 16 × 18 x 7 inches. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
AQO: What is the drawing machine and what inspired you to make it in 2004? Please explain what the headpiece does.
Ryan: The drawing machine is our curved easel that we mount on a tripod. We use it “en plein air” to make concave drawings and paintings by hand.
Trevor: Initially, we had little interest in drawing realistically as an art practice, but we were inspired to build our easel after figuring out a new method to draw space as the eye sees it.
Ryan: Once we invented this method of measuring and rendering space, we realized we needed to incorporate the insights of the matchstick sculpture and perform it on a curved surface in order to be in harmony with the shape of human vision. Furthermore, we needed to hold the eye of the person drawing very still in order to keep their vantage point consistent. So we built a curved easel and added a plaster head-stabilizing cap, which is basically a tripod for the eye.
Concave Easel, 2004, modified 2008, steel, aluminum plaster, 70 x 45 x 45 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
In process, Time Water: Hudson River I, 2018, oil on linen on aluminum, 20 x 21 x 10 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Plein air painting at the concave easel in snow and ice. Oil paint remains workable even in below zero temperatures, and precipitation can land on the wet oil paint without messing it up. Time Water: Hudson River III, 2018-19, oil on linen on stainless steel, 20 x 21 x 10 inches. Video: Andre Gauthier.
AQO: How specifically does your drawing method work?
Ryan: The drawing method utilizes an optical illusion created in the brain from the interplay between one’s two eyes. It works by tapping into the neuronal wiring that links the images from each eye into one unified image in the visual cortex.
Trevor: …which sounds complicated but it’s pretty simple. Basically one eye views the paper while the other eye simultaneously views the scene. And the two images become automatically superimposed in the brain.
Ryan: You can see how this works if you hold up a pen and look past it into the background. An optical illusion of the pen will appear as a double-image, if you can balance the images from both of your eyes. At this point, you may raise a piece of paper to the pen’s tip. While looking beyond the paper around its edge to the background scene, you can perceive one of the pen’s double-images hovering in midair and overlapping the distant scene, while the pen’s other double-image remains on the paper. With the floating pen, you can then trace the distant scene and record its proportions onto the paper.
With this method as a foundation, we’ve spent the last 15 years exploring a range of artistic and intellectual concepts using our curved drawing machine.
Photo illustration of the optical double-ghost image drawing technique used by the Oakes brothers to make their concave drawings. Here drawing the Duomo in Florence, Italy. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Diagram of sight lines converging behind the paper plane, the key component of the Oakes brothers double-ghost image drawing technique. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Self-Portrait: Brunelleschi’s Duomo from Afar, 2011, pigment ink, cotton paper, 8 x 9 x 3 inches. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
Time-lapse video of Winter Garden II, 2014-15, being drawn with Micron pigment pens. Video: Robert Jason.
Winter Garden I, 2011, pigment ink, cotton paper, 20 x 21 x 10 inches. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
Winter Garden I, 2011, pigment ink, cotton paper, 20 x 21 x 10 in. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
AQO: What is most important to you about the visual experiences you create? Are you interested in what your audiences take away?
Ryan: While we often develop and build our foundational concepts from moments of personal discovery, we don’t expect a viewer to think about the same root ideas.
Trevor: In creating a visual experience, the hope is to spark some sort of resonance that alights the viewer’s own ideas, associations, and creative connections.
Flatiron Building (After Steichen), 2014, pigment ink, cotton paper, 18 x 14.5 x 6 inches. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
Pioneer Trail, Marshall, North Carolina, 2009, pigment ink, cotton paper, 20 x 21 x 10 inches. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
Ocean Horizon Line: Pacific Coast Highway, 2010, pigment ink, cotton paper, 20 x 21 x 10 in. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
AQO: Briefly explain your process from conception to completion.
Trevor: We’re always ruminating on what art projects to do next. We discuss ideas a lot and once we’ve settled upon a concept for the next concave painting, such as flatness or the passage of time, we scout for an appropriate location to reinforce the ideas we want to explore in that work. We carry our easel around and look through it like a viewfinder to compare different compositions. This scouting phase can take a couple of days.
Ryan: Once we settle on the final vantage point, we attach the concave paper (or canvas) into the curved easel and begin the drawing or painting. In this time-lapse video, we’re drawing using a selection of 5 brightly colored pens, applied in layers starting with light blue and ending with deep magenta.
We only work on one two-inch vertical margin at a time and render it to completion before moving on to the next vertical strip.
Trevor: I do the majority of the pen-work, but each piece’s overall direction is steered collaboratively.
Ryan: We try to work every day. After anywhere between 11 days to 11 months the artwork is completed. Finished works are mounted to a concave cradle made of museum board or metal, to support them and keep their curvatures even.
Time-lapse video of Courtyard Garden, 2015, being drawn with Zig pigment markers. Video: Robert Jason.
Courtyard Garden, 2015, pigment ink, cotton paper, 20 x 21 x 28 inches. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
Time Passing Across Central Park, 2013-2017, pigment ink, cotton paper, 20 x 21 x 10 in. Photo: Megan Paetzhold.
AQO: In your most recent body of work from the Hudson River, you’ve introduced vertical slices into each scene. Can you tell me what they are about?
Trevor: They’re a way of adding the concept of time into the painting, in addition to space. They’re a sort of ticking of the clock to a daily beat of the changing climate.
Ryan: Each day one vertical section is painted from top to bottom for however the weather conditions look on that day. So a progression of 11 days transpire from left to right across each piece.
Trevor: These works show a permanence of space overlaid with a transience of time, which I feel rings true to the interaction between space and time that we experience.
Ryan: Though these works are a relatively objective account of an external temporal landscape, we also think of them as portraits of an internal emotional landscape, and a flow through a range of moods––for instance, uneasy, tranquil, clear-headed, mystified, radiant, and so on.
Time Water: Hudson River I, 2018, oil on linen on aluminum, 20 x 21 x 10 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Time Water: Hudson River II, 2018, oil on linen on aluminum, 20 x 21 x 10 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Time Water: Hudson River III, 2018-19, oil on linen on stainless steel, 20 x 21 x 10 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
AQO: When you work, is there room for spontaneity?
Ryan: While we often decide upon a rule system before executing each piece, the generative moment when those rules are formulated has plenty of room for spontaneity. And when placing the marks to the page, the hand is also spontaneous.
Trevor: Also, in the Hudson River works, one aspect that makes those paintings engaging is [that] each day I must readapt the color pallet and the way I represent the fluidity of water.
AQO: As an identical mirror twin myself, I have to ask… who starts the conversation, and who ends it? While working, do you feel like two halves of one mind? Do your strengths work together? Or is it cyclical?
Trevor: The mirror twin phenomenon is curious (Ryan’s right-handed; I’m left-handed). We do have a working dynamic that’s akin to being two halves of one mind.
Ryan: …though in this case the corpus callosum connecting the two halves manifests as external verbalization. We discuss things.
Trevor: Right. We spend a lot of time splitting hairs. For any given situation we strive to reach a consensus on the best path forward. But sometimes we disagree, at least in the short term.
The most recent example of being in disagreement is when we began the Hudson River Series. I strongly felt we should pick a singular weather condition, say cloudy with wind and choppy water, and depict the entire scene as such. Ryan, however, felt we should paint each day for its unique weather conditions and generate a composite of time passing across the landscape. Even though I remained skeptical, we tried it out, and within a few days I was convinced and glad Ryan had talked me into it.
AQO: Who has significantly influenced each of you? Are there any particular artists you admire... and why?
Trevor: Manuel Delanda is the most influential artist and philosopher for me because of his profound, thorough, cogent, and grounded descriptions of the world.
Also, observing nature and the physical dynamics of things has always been a source of inspiration.
Ryan: Matisse for his joyousness and gusto.
Trevor: Rembrandt’s etchings for their precision and perfectly defined textures.
Ryan: Rothko for his profound simplicity.
Trevor: Morandi’s potent use of gray tones.
Ryan: Monet’s wrap-around water lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie for their sense of expansiveness and invented space.
In process, Matchstick Bowl, 2002, wooden kitchen matchsticks, acrylic glue, 6 x 11 x 11 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
Matchstick Spiral, 2004, wooden strike anywhere matchsticks, acrylic glue,15 x 21 x 21 inches. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
AQO: What’s your favorite art accident?
Ryan: A noteworthy twist occurred while building the matchstick dome that is probably our favorite art accident.
Trevor: In the early phase of its construction, the sculpture seemed bound to become a dome due to the slight wedge shape of each individual match. However, when building it, we found that to coax a dome form to emerge, we needed to manually add a hair’s width of air space in between some of the match heads as we glued them side-by-side.
Ryan: “But that’s trickery,” I said, and a long, existential debate ensued about which approach was better—honesty or trickery? Ultimately, we decided to go with trickery for that sculpture. But now our curiosity was piqued. So for a following sculpture, we built the “honest” version as well. We wanted to see what global form the matches would assume if we didn’t add air gaps between their heads. To our amazement, they formed a beautiful and complex sea-shell-like spiral, due to the geometric discrepancy between the spherical match heads and the square match sticks.
Trevor: That art accident opened up a whole vein of projects that explore emergent forms.
Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA. Explode Everyday: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder, installation view, 2016-17. Curated by Denise Markonish. Courtesy Mass MoCA. Photo: Tony Luong.
Featured Portrait: The Oakes Brothers paint en plain air on their concave easel in Newburgh, NY. Time Water: Hudson River II, 2018, oil on linen on aluminum, 20 x 21 x 10 in. Photo: Andre Gauthier.
All images courtesy of the artists and Ronald Feldman Gallery.
