Home Artist Programs Supported Artists Ryan Leitner

Ryan Leitner

New Orleans, Louisiana

Untitled is a painting on a shaped geometric canvas. A form stretches across the shape, like a distorted arm with a giant hand.

Untitled

2023

Faer Child is a painting with a distorted form at the center, evoking body parts and stones twisted together.

Faer Child

2023

Brick Dust is an abstract painting , with a figure-like assemblage of gray rocks along the side and bottom, with melting fingers. A washy red circle punctuates the upper left.

Brick Dust

2022

Finding Rios is an abstract painting with a disjointed figure at the center, with a wave of distorted text floating below them.

Finding Rios

2021

Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.

About Ryan Leitner

Ryan Leitner sits in front of a pinned-up canvas, wearing a black t-shirt. He is a white man with light skin tone, and short cropped black hair.

Ryan Leitner is a collage artist, with an artistic inquiry towards the visualization of queerness and his communities’ cultural heritages. Assembling his works through a layering of painting and photographed sculptures, his two-dimensional pieces on canvas create otherworldly body-scapes and atmospheres that are molded and stacked together through photo manipulation and print transferring. Since receiving his MFA from The Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Leitner has studied at Skowhegan School for Painting and Photography, and received grants and fellowships from the The LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana, Antenna’s Platform Fund, and The Museum of Fine Arts. He has exhibited at The Plumbing Museum, Area Gallery, and Magnum Photo Foundation, and The Front Gallery.

Program Participation

Joan Mitchell Center Residency, 2024

Website / Social Links

“ Drawing inspiration from my queer activism and research, I look towards the queer experience as if our communities were given another realm to live in, with the ability to see and experience the world in our own way. Collecting interviews, archival materials, and experiences along the way, my studio practice becomes a daydream of a queer life that’s imagined and historicized.”

Related Journal Entries

In a darkened studio, Ryan Leitner shines a flashlight with a colored film over an abstract sculpture while photographing it. He is a white man with light skin tone, short dark hair, and a striped button-up.

In the Studio: Ryan Leitner

“I use a lot of different mediums and practices to express ideas on queer herita...

A staggered grid of 37 artworks of diverse aesthetics and media.

Announcing the 2024 Joan Mitchell Center Artists-in-Residence

We are pleased to announce the diverse and distinguished group of artists that w...