“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” – Edward Lorenz

Ryan Wolfe finally returns to Dam, Stuhltrager after response to his debut at the gallery sent him exhibiting across the world for two years. Wolfe’s “Sketch of a Field of Grass” travelled from Brooklyn to Miami, NYC, Chicago, Indianapolis, Newark, Istanbul, Washington DC, Wiesbaden and Chattanooga- leaving a trail of rave reviews and fans stretching across the globe. Before shipping off to Basel… And then Russia… Ryan Wolfe comes back to Brooklyn poised to jump on the whirlwind his new project sets in motion.

An installation inspired by the theories of Edward Lorenz opens one week after his death. This one man’s giant impact on contemporary thinking leaves everything after him forever changed.

BRANCHING SYSTEM (butterfly hurricane) Masses of robotic leaves flutter like butterflies, transforming the gallery space into a jungle-like network of complex, serendipitious motion. Individual viewers have an impact on this motion, and their physical interactions with the piece ripple out across the network like wind.

Branching Systems (butterfly hurricane) is an interactive installation exploring Lorenz’s famous “butterfly effect” which signalled the beginnings of modern chaos theory. It tangibly reimagines cause and effect wrapped into a single moment, and demonstrates how small variations of the initial condition of a nonlinear dynamic system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.

SITE SPECIFIC WORK (2008) Ryan Wolfe will unveil a brand new site specific work created for Dam, Stuhltrager’s Gallery Two.