ZOLTOG99: Ryan Foerster

In an abandoned lot in Miami, Ryan Foerster tucked a photograph between a chain link fence. Rebar jutted from the ground, bracing a printing plate. Lava rocks weighed down prints, while another rested on the broken cement. A month later, all the work was gone, blown away, thrown out, or taken to some new location.

In 2012, the show, without a gallery and without a title, was his first exhibition with Shoot the Lobster. Unlike the pieces in the abandoned lot, other work by Foerster has stuck around. Shoot the Lobster will mark its ten year anniversary and new location with a selection of paintings from Foerster’s show at C L E A R I N G gallery in 2020, ZOLTOG99. 

Dreams and memories thread into paper and prints, which hold an array of found materials, traces, prints and watercolor. Sometimes referred to as calendar paintings, they were first displayed in a large grid. Flowers from a garden, fruit coupons, sex dreams and nightmares, a honeycomb of packing material inform an archive of experiences. Symbols, subjects, and materials are either laid bare or obscured, or, like the infinity symbol on a greek coffee cup, are rearranged and repeated. Foerster himself hides halfway behind his moniker, Zoltog99, first devised as a name to show his paintings.

Entropy is inexorable and ambiguous. Somewhere the work from Miami has decomposed into a bird's nest, or decorates the wall of a stranger’s apartment. A dream gets remembered in between daily routines, and is transformed into a painting. Manifold currents illuminate these works, which fittingly enter a new chapter in their existence.

This exhibition is donating part of its proceeds to White Columns in honor of our partnership in the “White Columns / Shoot The Lobster Award,” which is presented annually to individuals who selflessly create a context for other artists’ ideas and seek to build communities around them.