May 9th, 2008
Coffee is the daily stimulant of choice for billions of people around the globe. In the hands of Masha Ryskin, coffee undergoes a transformation from drink to art- making tool.
The Rochester, N.Y., artist mixes instant coffee to various thicknesses, turning it into a watercolorish “paint” that is the primary creator of the imagery in “Coffeescape,” her wall piece on view through May 24 at the Haydon Art Center.
Working with coffee isn’t all that difficult, she said. But it has taught her something — stay away from instant.
“I don’t know what they put into it,” Ryskin said. “It must be glue. It really gets sticky. I sure don’t drink it.”
The coffee seeps into the thick white paper in various shades of brown and long, straight drips run down to the floor, providing strong lines amidst the collage of torn, printed imagery and large stains.
That imagery, in Ryskin’s mind, is a fragment of landscape. And it is possible to read “Coffeescape” just that way — a sometimes dense organic form occupying an imagined or perhaps vaguely remembered place with large expanses of the white support providing something like a “sky.”
But it’s just as easy to see “Coffeescape” as a provocative combination of abstract expressionship with the Duchampian notion of taking things not associated with art and making them “art.”
Marcel Duchamp famously entered a urinal into an open exhibition in 1917, titling it “Fountain” and creating a stir that continues to echo through the artworld. Ryskin’s use of coffee takes that now common concept and turns it back into the painting that Duchamp rejected.
“It’s an everyday material,” Ryskin said of her use of coffee. “I drink coffee every day. It’s the object of everyday life that becomes an art object. There’s something of a ritual in that (coffee drinking), too. And, it’s very beautiful.”
Some of the imagery spills off the paper that Ryskin had shipped for the show, ending up on the gallery walls, blurring the line between the object and the space in which it is presented.
If Ryskin’s original plan had been a possibility, that line wouldn’t have existed.
When Ryskin, a Russian immigrant who studied art at the University of Michigan, was chosen for the show from an open call for artists, she intended to create “Coffeescape” directly on the gallery walls.
But the Haydon drywall is covered with a muslinlike fabric that absorbed the coffee very quickly, slowed and thickened the drip and created a very uneven surface on which to try to work.
So Ryskin painted directly on the wall only on the pillar in the center of the gallery and around the edges of the paper, a practical move that allowed her to finish the work just hours before it went on view.
“The work is very intuitive,” Ryskin said, appropriately sipping from a cup of coffee, taking a short break before resuming tearing, pasting and painting. “It’s preplanned, but only on a very general level.”
That painting on the pillar and a small swatch on one of the gallery’s short walls link the two primary parts of “Coffeescape,” connecting the piece across open space, giving it unity that adds to its effectiveness.
Ryskin’s piece shares the Haydon space with water-related drawings by Bryce Speed, who teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, in the joint show titled “Metaphoric Drawing.”
While the works are compatible, at least as examples of approaches to drawings, it would have been fascinating to see what the gallery would have looked and felt like had Ryskin been given the entire space.
That would have required a far larger commitment of time and resources by both the artist and the gallery.
Ryskin arrived in Lincoln two days before her show opened and finished the two walls mere hours before the public was invited in to have a look. Doing a full gallery wall installation, which is what Ryskin calls her work, would take at least a week.
“I would like to, someday, have a gallery to myself for awhile and see what happens,” Ryskin said. “One day it’s going to happen.”
Coffee is the daily stimulant of choice for billions of people around the globe. In the hands of Masha Ryskin, coffee undergoes a transformation from drink to art- making tool.
The Rochester, N.Y., artist mixes instant coffee to various thicknesses, turning it into a watercolorish “paint” that is the primary creator of the imagery in “Coffeescape,” her wall piece on view through May 24 at the Haydon Art Center.
Working with coffee isn’t all that difficult, she said. But it has taught her something — stay away from instant.
“I don’t know what they put into it,” Ryskin said. “It must be glue. It really gets sticky. I sure don’t drink it.”
The coffee seeps into the thick white paper in various shades of brown and long, straight drips run down to the floor, providing strong lines amidst the collage of torn, printed imagery and large stains.
That imagery, in Ryskin’s mind, is a fragment of landscape. And it is possible to read “Coffeescape” just that way — a sometimes dense organic form occupying an imagined or perhaps vaguely remembered place with large expanses of the white support providing something like a “sky.”
But it’s just as easy to see “Coffeescape” as a provocative combination of abstract expressionship with the Duchampian notion of taking things not associated with art and making them “art.”
Marcel Duchamp famously entered a urinal into an open exhibition in 1917, titling it “Fountain” and creating a stir that continues to echo through the artworld. Ryskin’s use of coffee takes that now common concept and turns it back into the painting that Duchamp rejected.
“It’s an everyday material,” Ryskin said of her use of coffee. “I drink coffee every day. It’s the object of everyday life that becomes an art object. There’s something of a ritual in that (coffee drinking), too. And, it’s very beautiful.”
Some of the imagery spills off the paper that Ryskin had shipped for the show, ending up on the gallery walls, blurring the line between the object and the space in which it is presented.
If Ryskin’s original plan had been a possibility, that line wouldn’t have existed.
When Ryskin, a Russian immigrant who studied art at the University of Michigan, was chosen for the show from an open call for artists, she intended to create “Coffeescape” directly on the gallery walls.
But the Haydon drywall is covered with a muslinlike fabric that absorbed the coffee very quickly, slowed and thickened the drip and created a very uneven surface on which to try to work.
So Ryskin painted directly on the wall only on the pillar in the center of the gallery and around the edges of the paper, a practical move that allowed her to finish the work just hours before it went on view.
“The work is very intuitive,” Ryskin said, appropriately sipping from a cup of coffee, taking a short break before resuming tearing, pasting and painting. “It’s preplanned, but only on a very general level.”
That painting on the pillar and a small swatch on one of the gallery’s short walls link the two primary parts of “Coffeescape,” connecting the piece across open space, giving it unity that adds to its effectiveness.
Ryskin’s piece shares the Haydon space with water-related drawings by Bryce Speed, who teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, in the joint show titled “Metaphoric Drawing.”
While the works are compatible, at least as examples of approaches to drawings, it would have been fascinating to see what the gallery would have looked and felt like had Ryskin been given the entire space.
That would have required a far larger commitment of time and resources by both the artist and the gallery.
Ryskin arrived in Lincoln two days before her show opened and finished the two walls mere hours before the public was invited in to have a look.
Doing a full gallery wall installation, which is what Ryskin calls her work, would take at least a week.
“I would like to, someday, have a gallery to myself for awhile and see what happens,” Ryskin said. “One day it’s going to happen.”
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.