Press Release Sean Ryan February 3rd – March 12th, 2011

Winston Wächter Fine Art is pleased to announce its first solo show with multi-media artist Sean Ryan. Ryan’s work isolates and elevates fleeting instances of beauty in nature and our every day lives before they shift and are lost or discarded.

Much like a self portrait, this show is comprised of exquisitely rendered recreations of moments of idleness and distraction; watching clouds drift by, gazing out the window on a rainy day, or absentmindedly peeling the label off a bottle of beer. The common place is at the root of all of this ephemeral loveliness.

These mundane objects and idle moments are memorialized through his use of precious gold and silver leaf, the small, intimate scale of most of the works, and the extremely laborious, unforgiving silverpoint technique that he has chosen for his renderings of clouds.

The choice of silverpoint also serves to underscore Ryan’s interest in the mutability of the natural world. Made by dragging a silver implement across a prepared ground, the traces of silver will subtly change over time as they are exposed to air. This patina, as well as the way the silver simply appears to change with different lighting conditions, makes these pieces living, changing things.