May 17 - June 21, 2025
From Erin Cluley Gallery:
“Erin Cluley Gallery is pleased to announce current, an exhibition of new work by Dallas-based artist, Ryan Goolsby. The exhibition will debut new sculptures conceived around the rich symbolism of fountains. Simplifying architectural motifs into geometric patterns, Goolsby’s wall sculptures blend the lines between painting and three-dimensional art while maintaining a rigorous commitment to craftsmanship. The artist’s new sculptures explore water’s movement formally and how it parallels the shapes of electromagnetic fields and the circulatory system of the human body. current builds on his previous work of abstracting the banal and focuses on the structure of the fountain.
Ryan Goolsby constructs his sculptures utilizing a combination of traditional woodworking and digital techniques. His meticulous preparation of natural woods provides a substrate
for routing patterns via the use of a CNC machine. The artist’s patterns are designed first digitally then transcribed into the surface of wood grain. Layers of colored resin and paint are applied to the surface of the wooden patterns, transforming the works into elegant geometric abstractions. Broken up into separate pieces, the final sculptures come together to form a disconnected, but structurally symmetrical composition. Overlapping lines, transitioning from linear to curlicue, both comfort and challenge the viewer’s eye. In current, Goolsby’s complex patterns affirm his subject matter’s constantly unstable nature.
current explores the familiar symbol of water as it is captured in architectural structures
like fountains and the human body. Goolsby uses repeated shapes and color to disrupt liquid’s flow through art. His sculpture’s optical illusions become apt metaphors for water’s resistance to complete apprehension; just as patterns in the artist’s sculptures intersect, moving between simple and complex, so does liquid travel through a surface or body. Untitled (2025) is a large-scale wood sculpture resembling an Art Deco water fountain. Arches range in size from small to large as if being pushed from spickets at varying pressures. Points where the arches overlap across individual pieces create a visual effect of blurriness, seeming to ripple even if they are structurally frozen.
In Ryan Goolsby’s newest presentation of work at Erin Cluley Gallery, the artist translates the soft nature of flowing liquids into the framework of solid materials. His sculptures resemble the flow of water and electromagnetic fields, two structures known for their fluid movement in and out of cohesion. current shows Goolsby melding the materiality and conceptual underpinnings of his work seamlessly, still allowing room for the flux of things in constant movement.
current will be the artist’s second solo presentation with Erin Cluley Gallery. It will be exhibited concurrently with an exhibition of work by 2025 Cluley Projects open call winner Leili Arai Tavallaei.
Ryan Goolsby (b.1976) is an artist and fabricator based in Dallas, TX.
Ryan Goolsby creates geometric sculptures, both freestanding and wall mounted, made from common building materials. Influenced by his background in photography, the artist translates his previous mode of making from candid documentation into a kind of recording through object abstraction. Through these sculptures, he organizes and amplifies patterns found in nature, such as the concentric circles that occur within the wood with which he sculpts or the microscopic structures within everything. This ultimate duality in the work thus echoes one of existence—the push and pull between being something and nothing, purpose and futility.
Goolsby has a B.F.A. in photography from the University of North Texas (2001), and an MFA in sculpture from Texas Christian University (2014). He has exhibited at the Modern Museum of Fort Worth, Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Liliana Bloch Gallery (Dallas), The Power Station (Dallas), among others. His work is held in the collections of Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, UT Southwestern, Greenhill School, and Mercedes Benz.
Erin Cluley Gallery is a contemporary art gallery representing emerging, mid-career, and established artists from Dallas and the United States. The gallery presents a provocative program of artists working in both traditional and alternative forms including painting, sculpture, new media, photography, sculptural installation and public intervention.
In 2014, Erin Cluley Gallery ignited a creative movement in West Dallas acting as a hub for visual arts and community engagement. After nearly five years on Fabrication Street, the gallery has moved its operation to Riverbend – a development in Dallas’ Design District celebrating the intersection between culture and commerce.
From April 2021 to November 2024, Cluley opened and operated Cluley Projects – a satellite location in West Dallas acting as an incubator space focusing on regional artists and providing a platform for discovery and mentorship.”
Reception: May 17, 2025 | 5–7 pm
150 Manufacturing Street, Suite 210
Dallas , 75212 Texas
214-538-1148
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