Rob Ryan

Robert Ryan is a realistic romantic. On the one hand, his highly decorative cut-outs and screen prints of loving couples, hands clasped tightly, ringed by church bells, boats, boughs and borders are almost too sweet, teetering on sentimentality rather than fantastically made objects rich in sentiment.

But then, looking again, you begin to read the words delicately cut amongst the imagery and find a world filled with dark as well as light, where love, hate, loss, pain, fear and death are to be found. This is a body of work, which, beneath their overtly visual romance, is almost visceral in it's melancholy. Here are tales and poems to rival the darkest of Grimm's fairy-tales, storytelling that has been present throughout Robert Ryan's work since the late 1970's and early '80's.

The simple and straightforward subjects of Robert Ryan's work are in marked contrast to the deceptively sophisticated manner in which they are made; painstakingly hand-cut with the smallest scalpels from the most delicate of papers.

About the Artist:

Robert Ryan was born in Cyprus in 1962. He studied fine art at Nottingham Trent Polytechnic before going on to an MA in printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London. Recent exhibitions have included the solo show The Museum of Us at The Horse Hospital in London and See the Job, do the Job at Hedspace in Brighton.

In 2006 Robert held solo shows at Dreamshoes Jaguarbags, London and Paul Smith's Pink+ shop in Tokyo followed by a show at the Paul Smith Milan shop in February 2007.