Catherine Ryan Paper Boat Gallery and Boutique 2375 S. Howell Avenue, Milwaukee 414-483-8462 June 6-30, 2008 By Julia Luckenbill June 20, 2008. Paper Boat Gallery is currently showing a series of drawings by San Francisco artist Catherine Ryan. These drawings examine the menial nature behind "canned" hunting preserves, where an artificial playfulness thinly masks "what once was" the relationship between man and animal. Ryan describes these preserves as, "...plots of private, fenced-in land that are stocked with a wide array of domestically-raised "wild game". A commoditized and sanitized version of something that was once an instinctual means of survival, canned hunts are stripped of the inconvenience, danger, and uncertainty of an actual hunt. Like fast food, canned hunts are a perverse version of something real; devoid of substance, but packaged for easy consumption" (Ryan). Thus, this series appears to have a subtext moving beneath the linear surface of orange caps and rifled space. It engages a conversation of human control through artificial dominance; a place where man decides who and what should be included in the hunt. At first glance, Untitled 2 features a man with pheasants and his dogs. We see the primary colors of a moment, an interaction of dominance through the hunt. Yet, this moment stands stagnant, void of nature's backdrop to hold its frame. The eye wanders in the absence of a landscape, curious as to the placement of objects. If this is indeed a hunting scene, why radically eliminate its fundamental setting? Trees, streams, birds, plants, sky, and horizon lines are excluded within the composition. But why? The subjects appear static, stuck in an afterthought rather than an action. This superficial quality of hunter, pheasants and canine companions attracts the viewer but does not visually engage them into the piece. It appears as though Ryan consciously chose this metaphor of packaged space. Isolating her subjects from their organic environment, she takes away the beauty and motion of a backdrop in order for the viewer to understand the emptiness of a "canned" pursuit. Ryan uses charcoal, acrylic, and graphite pencil on mounted paper. Her use of contour line within her human figures establishes a boundary between forms and shadows. The stark contrast of color within these spaces pushes the featured topic forward, settling our eyes onto the man holding his pride and his prey. Ryan chooses to structure her animals somewhat differently than her figures. Applying graphite and charcoal to the page first, she takes away her medium, constructing the form of her animals through outlines of negative space. Thus, this imbues a sympathetic, softness within her animals, juxtaposed by the harshness of the hunter. Within this series, Ryan challenges the paradox of an absent gaze. She leaves her figures faceless, void of eyes and nose. Caught within a moment of reflection and self-projection, this absence connotes an indefinite truth through what we see as negative space. For example, in Purple Mountains an expression harbors inside the mouth, but the gaze remains unclear. Whose eyes fit the face? Quickly we may identify specifics, as we insert our own personal experience into the piece, however, without a literal gaze, the relationship with the subject is strained; thus, we remain disconnected. Painting can often interact as a sublime instrument of dissatisfaction, a dispute from visual orthodoxy and or a received idea. Within this series, Ryan plays with the question of what we are seeing versus what should be seen. She leaves room for our eye to read between the lines, engaging facts through abstract forms. Thus, we are forced to reduce the authenticity of a hunting scene into a primeval version of bestial force. The animals within Ryan's work hold a face and a feeling, and yet the humans hauntingly do not. There is a sense of detachment between man and animal, an encounter of the incompatibles. Nevertheless, as seen in Untitled 2 our eyes still move between the internal rhythms of the hunter's facial hair and the canine's muzzle, maintaining a sense of balance within a dissonant state. Within Ryan's work of two men standing over a bear, it appears as though the body of the two men carries a sense of energy and force that the face does not. Expressions are turned inward upon themselves through the eyes that do not meet the viewer's gaze. It is as if the head solely becomes another limb, void of substance, while as the face of the dead bear holds the memory of life. This series of work narrates fragments of "canned" hunts that we cannot reassemble for ourselves. Nature is lost but man's destruction is preserved. And we cannot help but question, where has it gone? In order to convey a message, an observation is simply not enough. Instead, we must actively engage ourselves within a composition, often reducing it of its logic so that we can understand its empirical truth.