Princess 1994

Vasiliy Ryabchenko made this drawing, Princess, with pencil and crayon using soft marks and muted tones which create a dreamlike atmosphere. I can imagine Ryabchenko layering those soft strokes, letting the composition emerge through a process of addition and erasure. It’s a really intimate process, like whispering secrets onto the page. I wonder what he was thinking about while he made it? The surface is alive with texture and the act of mark-making itself becomes part of the subject. There’s a kind of push and pull between representation and abstraction. Ryabchenko is playing with the tension between what we see and what we feel. It’s like he’s inviting us to enter his world and create our own stories, too. And through that, he joins a broader conversation among artists who dare to explore the complexities of human experience.