Victim 1989

Vasiliy Ryabchenko made this painting, Victim, with what looks like house paint, and maybe some oil sticks, given the thickness, the layering, the red. The red is so insistent, it bleeds through everything, that raw alizarin color that’s so loaded. It’s like the whole painting is blushing, or maybe it's been wounded. I keep coming back to the figure on the left, this ghostly form, almost fetal in its curl. The black lines really bring out the shape, give it weight, like lead came in stained glass, but then also flatten it, make it more of a graphic. Ryabchenko’s not trying to trick you into seeing a realistic figure, he’s showing you the bare bones of how to build one. It reminds me of some of Francis Bacon’s raw, figurative paintings, the way they seem to be emerging from chaos. With both artists there’s this idea of painting as a process of revealing, of finding form within the mess. You can see the ghosts of marks underneath, the history of the painting right there on the surface. It's like a conversation that never really ends.