The question of what it means to inhabit a body or view the world from within one's body continues to be a central focus for me.
Ryan Van Der Hout (b. 1987, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Tkaronto / Toronto and New York City whose practice spans photography, public art, and sculpture. They activate material processes to navigate states of being, such as grief, undoing, and queer becoming. Central to Van Der Hout's practice is the innovative use of photographic imagery as a foundational element in creating three-dimensional objects and installations, consistently using the photographic image as a scaffold to create objects that utilize the image as pure material.
Van Der Hout's public works often function as large optical devices, reflecting and refracting the surrounding space to create an ongoing physical dynamic with the viewer. This approach relates back to photographic seeing, challenging traditional notions of the medium and blurring the lines between image and sculpture. Their work is deeply rooted in the process of making, using the act of creation as a means to investigate and articulate complex emotional and social states. Frequently incorporating elements of Jewish ritual and often featuring their own body and those of their community members, Van Der Hout's work offers a lens on the interconnectedness of materiality and human emotion.
Van Der Hout’s work has been widely featured in publications including The Huffington Post, Vogue Italia, Fortune Magazine, Larry’s List, CBC, PhotoEd Magazine and Reader’s Digest. He has exhibited across Canada, The United Kingdom, and New York, most notably in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Collectors Series, as part of a Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival primary exhibitions, and in The Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward festival. They have created public art for the City of Toronto, Toronto Archives, The TTC, Nuit Blanche and Pemberton Developments. Van Der Hout was awarded the Emerging Artist Award by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council. They have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Metropolitan University and an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons at The New School.