West Street Gallery is pleased to present the work of New York-based artists Ryan Foerster and Kyle Thurman.

Foerster (b. 1983; Newmarket, Ont.) works in and around the medium of photography, which he has intuited as a process to document, collect and explore. The conditions under which the artist produces images—using film and available light—often result in abstractions. Image and medium collide romantically, each in Foerster's world fragile and material but tenacious.

The artist has long published his photographs in zines, and he has previously utilized for presentation the aluminum plates covered in ink and intended as garbage. Foerster's experience working as a color technician led to his interest in the photographic paper used to clean the processor. When the machine's chemicals are contaminated, its temperature mis-calibrated or its paper jammed, Foerster feeds the processor with dummy paper, creating unique photographic images. Throughout, the artist has presented representational images and readymades, both of which come from his immediate surroundings.

Kyle Thurman (b. 1986; West Chester, PA) presents paintings from two recent series. The semi-reflective surfaces of his seemingly monochromatic panels, made with glossy enamel paint, change as the viewer circumnavigates the work. The rapidly shifting textures of these paintings paradoxically create a singular image above the panel's surface—an effect of suspension not unlike that of projecting film.

In a second series, Thurman scatters dried flowers over canvas, effectively creating a stencil, and fills the ground with pigment extracted from these same pre-dyed flowers. The result is a field of red-pink stains equal parts warm and organic and acrid. The artist likens the combination of organic methods of pigment dying and automated figure-ground relationships to the coping mechanisms of individuals incorporating “nature” into city life.

Both Thurman and Foerster create new sculptures that verge on furniture. Thurman creates a table rooted in his enamel paintings, and Foerster makes benches from discarded wood collected from the neighborhood.