Wednesday 28th Jun - Saturday 29th Jul 2006
THE STARS SHINE ALL DAY TOO
ROB RYAN
I always like to sit next to the window, especially if I am flying alone.
Flying to Tokyo, you really spend a lot of time flying over Siberia and there isn't a lot of human life there at all. Just hour after hour of air, miles of nothing, well not nothing but lakes and snow and mountains.
In your plane seat you can begin to feel pretty insignificant, up there and quite alone in the darkness, but all through the journey, looking out my window, I could see one star brighter than the rest. Although the landscape changed all the time, the star never left me and I named it MY star and as long as it was still there it made me feel all right.
I knew that when it got light it would leave me and I began to panic at 36,000 feet, but of course then I realized that although I couldn't see it, it would still be there and I carried that thought with me all the lonely time I was in Japan.
Rob Ryan, 2006
SEVENTEEN is delighted to present a new body of work from Rob Ryan.
Ryan's practice is based around the cutting and removal of paper to produce images and pattern within a single sheet of card. The works are characterized by an intricate and detailed physical structure, which is echoed by an equally lacy and delicate emotional centre within the pieces.
This exhibition marks a dramatic leap in scale and complexity for Ryan, as the show is comprised of one large-scale diptych, which takes as its genesis the tension between visible and unseen, night and day. Beginning with its own physical structure, the duality of two opposing planes, and the notions of absence and presence inherent to a papercut, the work, under scrutiny, reveals a tension between an immediately visible sentimentality and a disquieting malice, partially camouflaged by stars, lace, bells and bows. The text included in the patterns can veer wildly from saccharine to dark, as Ryan's monologues stretch from joyous declarations of love and life to brooding thoughts of longing and despair.