“Odd Array: The Adept’s Sweet Portrait,” 2025 Oil on canvas 20.5 x 16.5 in
Flowers have been depicted in all cultures in multiple guises throughout history. They’ve been carved on the pillars of prehistoric ruins, scratched into petroglyphs on canyon walls, and painted inside households in Pompeii. They’ve been delicately rendered in gouache on Indian manuscripts and painted with passion by everyone from Jan Davidsz de Heem to Vincent van Gogh to Pablo Picasso. Blossoms have served as surrogates for status, politics, sexual mores, love and death. In the world of art, flowers are shapeshifters extraordinaire.
In the delightfully whimsical work of Ryan Fenchel’s “Odd Array” exhibit at Haw Contemporary, all 14 of his madcap bouquets function primarily as self-portraits, ranging from the zany to the foreboding. They exist in a rainbow of colors and patterns, in shapes from the simple to Byzantine. Some of his flowers are recognizable; others could be hybrids and many are purely fanciful. They are decidedly alive and seem capable of intelligent thought and every possible sort of mischief. They are all signature Fenchel, and totally unique.
Born in Chicago, Fenchel received his BFA in printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute, followed by an MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University in Illinois. He now lives and works in Los Angeles.
“My aesthetic process,” Fenchel said in a recent interview, is to always be someone who is learning… I have my fingers in a lot of pies.
“But mostly I’m involved in what I consider to be an alchemical language. When I make art, I’m very practical in one sense. I begin with the dross and the dregs and then things turn into a process where I metaphysically end up thinking about myself. My hands are assessing everything, and this kind of creative mystery keeps my attention throughout this whole process. It’s my every day and yet it’s enigmatic.”
A terrific colorist, Fenchel also intuitively mixes media, and may also sand or alter the surface of his paintings in a variety of ways.
Fenchel’s earliest work was vessels, sometimes accompanied by figures.
“I try to steer clear of narratives,” Fenchel says, “but the people on the vessels are often stand-ins for myself… It’s like I’m now at the final stage where all the seeds in the vessels have grown and exploded out of their containers.”
Although his paintings take comedic turns, Fenchel’s works are subtly and expansively grounded in major art movements, from cubism to surrealism. He spends time in Japan and there is also a nod to ikebana, the Japanese art of floral arrangement that stresses the singularity and energetic quality of each flower in a highly curated procedure.
“Hip Hop music is important to me and to a certain extent my art is also sample based,” Fenchel says. “My art is as much a philosophical collage as it is a literal, visual collage. There’s honesty in my work and it’s authentic, but people can bring whatever they want to bring to it. It begins to unravel over time.”
“Ryan Fenchel: Odd Array” continues through Dec. 29 at Haw Contemporary gallery, 1600 Liberty St. Hours are 9 to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday. Closed for Thanksgiving Nov. 26, 27 and 28. For more information, 816.842.5877 or hawcontemporary.com.
