Ryan

Ryan is a contemporary artwork realized by Ryan Mendoza in 2000.

Pencil and charcoal on paper.

Hand signed on the lower margin.

Provenance: Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia

Born in 1971 in New York, Mendoza's personal story is subsequently intertwined with the two extremes of Europe, Naples and Berlin, the two cities in which he has lived and worked up to now. In his works he represents complex theatricality, models anatomies, doses colours, calibrates lights, draws on a rich archive of memories, confusing ancient pictorial wisdom and contemporary risks. The artist's attention is particularly focused on portraits in which he carries out distortions and alterations: he exhibits perspective disproportions, reveals anatomical dissonances, manifests dystonias between the characters in the foreground and the backgrounds. His characters appear "possessed", it is no coincidence that the title of the 2010 solo show at the Muse d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina in Naples is "The possessed". A fundamental part of his inspiration comes from old photographs bought in flea markets and from which he borrows suggestions and imagery. In 2015 the artist published his first novel "Tutto è mio" at Bompiani, an autobiographical story that is an emotional, lucid and excruciating chronicle. In the last two years, the operation carried out by purchasing Rosa Parks' house, which Mendoza transported from the United States to Europe to exhibit first in Rotterdam and then in Berlin, has caused great uproar