Store
Steven Dwayne Bryk
b.1958
• active memberships with Visual AIDS (New York City);
• key artist contributions with the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (National Portrait Collection with gallery showings in Toronto and Ottawa), Visual AIDS (Day With(out) Art: RADIANT PRESENCE, and Postcards From The Edge) (New York City and globally), The Dawson City Art Society Puzzle Project (Dawson City, Yukon), The Cityscapes Online Exhibition (Toronto) and The Bear History Project (Bear Icons: Art & Artifacts Exhibition with gallery showings in the cities of New York City, Boston, Provincetown, San Francisco and Key West);
• individual gallery showing, “For The Love of Art Brut”, O’Connor Gallery (Toronto);
• recent gallery exhibitions and recognitions with Blank Wall Gallery (Athens, Greece), 514 Art Gallery (Online), Fusion Art (Palm Springs), Grey Cube Gallery (Online), Art Room Contemporary Art Gallery (Online), PH1 (Budapest, Hungary), Chania International's Photography Festival (Chania, Greece), The Glasgow Gallery for Photography (Glasgow, Scotland), Portrait Magazine, The Pennsylvania Centre for Photography (Doylestown, Pennsylvania).
Steven Dwayne Bryk has been a Visual AIDS archive member since 2007.
“The only journey is the one within.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke
If an individual's character is reduced to the sum of his sexuality, admittedly, there is little to say to me beyond the obvious or the banal. My approach and style would ethically challenge our world's impatient, ordered, and stereotyped environment. In speaking about my work, the figurative and painterly qualities of some of the human body are often passed by as colourful and rhythmic images without thought to the visual content. My work predominates as an articulation and a celebration of our natural and primal human instincts. My work continues to develop brut art style: art exploring the human condition based on an emotional response without a need to adhere to the stereotyped expectations within our global society. Ideally, as an "outsider artist" honouring my 42nd+ year living with HIV/AIDS, I often create to provoke verbal intercourse. From the wholesome aesthetic to the artistically vibrant, my portfolio deals with the elements and principles of design, global portraiture, architecture, street photography, queer culture, emotional discourse and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Notoriously dismissive of critical evaluation of my work and perhaps too self-absorbed to offer anything other than my work to clarify the methods and meanings (and madness) behind my artistic approach, I view myself as a complex and consequential 'digital queer' whose photographic work is misunderstood (or not understood) as it is adored.
Photography, more than anything, is my therapy and my passion. I am pleased to be sharing my photographic journey with you.
Freely and openly, I describe myself as a person living with multiple disabilities and as a member of a sexual minority.
Steven Dwayne Bryk
Montreal, QC
CANADA