Artist: Ranny Macdonald

General Assembly presents One Small Step, a show of new works by Ranny Macdonald. In this exhibition, Macdonald explores reality from fleeting and distorted perspectives, often from the sidewalk vantage points of dogs or the bird’s eye view of the city’s pigeons. Taken together, the works offer the viewer novel visions of reality that challenge the supremacy of the human perspective.

Indeed, human presence is incidental in Macdonald’s compositions. Most often it is a mere leg, attenuated and walking away from the scene that Macdonald is drawing our attention to. The humans are single mindedly striding forward, but in doing so they miss the small moments unfolding around them. Macdonald redirects our gaze there.

In these fleeting moments we find joy and whimsy: a dog gleefully prancing, a pigeon’s alarm at an ominous foot, or a bird’s reflection in the glassy façade of a skyscraper. The sometimes prosaic scenes reveal the artist’s deep curiosity about his surroundings; no moment is too small for reverence and consideration. In that, Macdonald elevates his oft overlooked subjects, basking them in an almost divine light that signals to the viewer that their stories have value.

Macdonald’s world takes dimension in the relief sculpture Footprint. The artist positions the viewer underneath a looming shoe, as the pigeons in his pictures. In such position, the viewer is the unwitting subject of the artist’s composition. In this moment, Macdonald simultaneously elevates and demotes the viewer; he holds a proud, central position in the composition, but only underneath the heel of a passerby. It is a clever mechanism that invites viewers to question their own awareness and values.

Upon consideration, Macdonald’s artistic choices are not merely aesthetic, but a language to explore and communicate deeply held philosophical beliefs. He uses composition, perspective, and subject matter to present an alternative value system. Macdonald’s pictures highlight the relationship between our awareness and the values we hold. By redirecting our eyes and awareness, he quietly challenges the human centric value system that we exist within.