“The outer surfaces had retained all their importance and it can even be said that the world was only a surface under which there was a vacuum or a thick and homogeneous density.”—Italo Calvino, “I Empty It and Fill It,” 1984
This cryptic quote sets the stage for the enigmatic world that Detroit painter and printmaker Ryan Standfest conjures into being with his solo exhibition “As then there was no then, so there is none now.” Thirteen paintings, two colored-pencil drawings and three drypoint intaglio prints in the exhibition set human unease within a post-industrial urban environment, where derelict architecture shares space with re-encroaching nature and re-sprouting civilization.
Rendered in saccharine pastels, the scenes depicted in the modestly scaled paintings in the exhibition at Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center might be taken—at first—for storybook illustrations. But their sentimental surfaces are deceptive; in this dystopian world, the solidity of structures, the logic of space and the identities of the constituent parts can’t be depended upon. There are no visible inhabitants in this neverland, though occasionally empty text boxes emerge from mysterious excavations.
The architectural features in the paintings can be taken as stand-ins for the figure, and there often seem to be two of them in an implied dialogue. “Obligatory Courtship” is a case in point: two structures rendered in axonometric perspective rest side by side, neither casting a shadow. The contrasts in scale between the pink factory-like building and the much smaller yellow bungalow represent an unlikely pairing, perhaps a reflection that the juxtaposition of the domestic with the industrial is a frequent feature in Detroit’s neighborhoods. In many of the paintings, one can guess that the sense of dislocation felt in the presence of homes with commercial structures nearby, many of them uninhabited, may be a powerful subliminal pretext for the anomie of these gnomic scenes.
The acrylic paintings on wood panels are roughly textured, and individual components have been built up into low relief. Compositional elements—chasms both rectangular and circular, ovals and thick, straight, parallel lines—serve in different pictorial capacities, depending upon their placement in the paintings. One rough, round shape looks as if it might be a boulder, another could be a cloud or a UFO. The parallel lines can represent roads leading to dead ends or off into the distance, but refuse to obey the basic rules of one-point perspective. The architectural elements, drawn in isometric perspective from above, allow for a comprehensive understanding of their form and structure, but put them at odds with the surrounding countryside.
The artworks’ titles are interesting in themselves, and a reminder that Standfest’s artistic sensibility, which has its origins in printmaking and publishing, straddles the verbal and the visual. The title of the exhibition itself is structured as an aphorism, yet its sense remains (intentionally, one suspects) just out of reach. Titles of individual artworks, such as “The Merchant of Regret” and “The Dumb Waiter,” suggest humorous self-deprecation, while “An Irreconcilable Romance” and “A Barely Concealed Yearning” hint at failed personal connections.
While most of the artworks are paintings, two jewel-like colored pencil drawings, entitled “Ode to Joy 1” and “Ode to Joy 2,” add welcome dimension. Standfest seems very much at ease in this small scale, and the light emanating from behind each cloud-like shape is reminiscent of Chicago Imagist Roger Brown’s fantastical urban landscapes. The emotionally withholding qualities of the larger paintings dissolve into symmetry and even a kind of lyric harmony.
Last but not least, three intaglio prints in the exhibition represent Standfest at his finest and most fluid as a draftsman and printmaker. Many of the pictorial elements from the paintings reappear in the prints—the ambiguous oval shapes, thin lines, industrial architecture—but with a human figure, or parts thereof, added. The truncated limbs of some flannel-shirted bro appear in each print, and among the three, might make up most of a human body. The legs are pictured mid-pratfall in one print, the knit-capped head turned away in another, a severed hand in a third, calamity rendered as comedy. Diagrammatic marks punctuate the composition, and the ever-present industrial edifices recede into a barren distance.
Dislocation and disorientation are at work in Standfest’s cosmology, but he never loses his ironic voice. His psychologically complex visualizations of emotional and spiritual states only obliquely address larger societal issues, being more concerned with private, ever-present social shames, frustrations and loneliness. But as he persistently engages with the complexities of human emotion that litter the bleak landscapes in his paintings, he retains an absurdist’s wry observation—that the situation may be hopeless but not serious.
“Ryan Standfest: As then there was no then, so there is none now” is on view at Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, 1516 South Cranbrook, Birmingham, Michigan, through October 30.
