Paul Ryan

detail of Original – Three Crosses After Michelangelo —

» From the pages of small books produced over the last eighteen years, pages are now being re-examined on a large scale. The end results of these enquiries are large-scale 'drawings' which at first appear spontaneous, but on closer inspection reveal a process of painstaking reconstruction. «

Paul Ryan is a London based artist who questions ideas of originality and authorship in this piece. It follows a process that brings the final work some way from the 16th century drawing. An initial drawing of Michelangelo’s Three Crosses was made into an A6 size sketchbook, taken from a reproduction in a book. The small drawing was then reproduced by hand using a pointillistic technique in black ink. The black dots give the impression of the graphite line.

The title refers to the questions arising from notions of ‘the original’ in the sequence, with reference to both the subject and the media.

The finished piece is a beautiful yet simple transcription of the original Michelangelo whose process has been taken through various changes to become the large scale drawing in the exhibition.

@ Artist's Website

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