Games with characters 1993

Vasiliy Ryabchenko made this small-scale drawing, "Games with characters," with pencil, ink, and sanguine on paper. Looking at these figures, it is as if the artist began drawing these characters, these bodies, but then allowed the architecture of marks, scribbles and smudges, to take over. We see forms, but we also see the artist’s hand. The overall effect is to create this sort of atmospheric depth. And within that, a kind of vibration, an energy. I imagine Ryabchenko stepping back from the easel, squinting, trying to bring these characters into being. Does he build up the image slowly or intuitively? Is it a labor of love, with many changes, or does it appear in a flash? The work reminds me a little of Twombly's drawings, where the figures are in an ongoing conversation across time, each inspiring the other's creativity. Because painting is a form of embodied expression, the work embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.