Ryan Riss
This is what happens when one unbuilds a drawing. Unbuilding elicits an act or a movement. It is more action than the thing. It is more about living life than the life lived. Unbuilding is about being as a means, not to an end but to another means. It becomes the rhythm to reclamation. And it is the reminder that the whole is always less than the sum of its parts.
Here is a process video on unbuilding a drawing. Attached are 9 random screenshots that show moments (frozen in time) from the unbuilding process. It’s strange to ponder if the screenshots are the “it” of what’s here. But then again, it seems odd to process that any ‘It” of what might come from any process undermines and ultimately defeats the (un)building. Perhaps maybe because unbuilding transcends, no, much more subscends any notion of “itness.”
Ryan Riss draws as a means to explore the connection between ourselves and reality. In this case, reality is gathered on paper. Paper is a fundamental (and largely under-represented) substrate that drives this drawing practice (paper as both an object and a means of composition). Simple tools and simple means are used to create meditative reflections on the world. Time and space factor into the rhythm of our everyday dance with eternity. This is an attempt at contextualizing existence and seeing another side of what constructs our truth. Ryan recently is interested in the various ways in which drawing, as an act and a result of the act, represents perception. As a striving eternal optimist, he tries to draw most days.