About

Bio Ryan Hill is a Los Angeles-born, Tucson-based artist who generates drawings through thematic series, site-specific installations, performances, and projections. He focuses on the interplay between imagery and language, as well as subjectivity and culture, working within a "world-building" genre.

During Ryan's time as a UC Santa Cruz undergraduate, he was introduced to the university’s History of Consciousness program, an interdisciplinary department focusing on leading intellectual trends in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. This stimulated interdisciplinary interests in technology, psychology and philosophy which he continued in UCLA's Graduate Program in Film & Television and later in California Institute of the Arts Graduate Program in Studio Arts. After gaining his masters in both areas of study, Ryan became deeply involved with the Los Angeles art and performance scene. During this time, he found his voice as a collaborator, working on site-specific installations and performances that toured national nonprofit, academic, and museum venues. Of note, he had ongoing collaborations with other artists; including John Fleck, the movement collective SHRIMPS, artist Liz Young, Johanna Went, and choreographer Melinda Ring. After moving to New York City, Ryan continued a performance practice at local non-profits and alternative venues. In Washington DC, he found ways of reconciling a studio practice with performance by joining the gallery Civilian Art Projects. As a solo artist he focuses primarily on drawing series, site-specific installation and performances. Ryan drawing installations and video projections are shown nationally with some work traveling internationally as part of group shows.

Artist Statement Drawing is my primary medium. I find it the best way to represent my thinking process. It's both spontaneous and conceptual which makes it able to record a steady stream of associations.

Depending on the ideas I'm playing with at the time, my materials and techniques vary from series to series. My drawings usually go through a machine-like process to hide my hand through drawing images repeatedly, tracing source material, or using industrial design techniques. It's all in the service of making work appear effortness, a direct address to the viewer.

As a queer artist I understand the power of the imagination as both an escape from social constructs and the crystallization of personal truths. For this reason, I am interested in public spaces where people gather to look at the uncanny like wunderkammer, circus side shows, and flea markets. These are places where science, technology, politics, the military, religion, and culture intersect through objects that fabricate our sense of reality. Each of my projects starts with thematic research, generating imagery and text that are the basis of my drawings.

My background in performance makes me very aware of the gallery as a theatrical space. For this reason, I often show my works on paper in mixed groups and installations that encourage viewers to work through their disorientation and make their own connections. For this reason I am interested in public spaces where people gather to look at the uncanny like wunderkammer, circus side shows, and flea markets. These are places where science, technology, politics, religion, and culture intersect through objects that interweave and fabricate our sense of reality. These are third spaces where viewers are free to make their own connections. I often show my drawing series in mixed groups to encourage this kind of nonlinear thinking.

My work is both serious and humorous, finished and unfinished, formal and kitsch. My drawings are objects of curiousity, a kind of bewitchment, relying on artifice to provoke the smallest inkling of something real to hold onto.