Closer – Ryan Shultz

Ryan Shultz is an American figurative painter
with a mastery of old world painting techniques.

When Calvin Klein gave us heroin chic in the 1980s,
with the ads and the billboards of waif-thin chicks strung out
on the shit, we didn’t realize then that Calvin never actually got his hands dirty and therefore never knew in the first person, the true wasted-youth protocol, Ryan Shultz does. He lives his art. All of the players in his Fuck-it-all, leave-a-beautiful-corpse libretto are
closely connected to Ryan himself. It is said that the writer is the sum total of everything he has ever read and the painter is the sum total of everything he has ever seen. Ryan’s genius comes from looking at the world through the historical and not just the
rose-colored lens. This lens cross references and finds old master compositional devices and thus allows Ryan to infuse his
paintings with venerable precedence.
I know Ryan and not only is he in touch with the spirit of the libertine, he is looking at us through the eyes of thousands of great dead painters. Therefore the crash pad tweeker becomes
Caravaggio’s Bacchus. Vice versus virtue in art has been a
reoccurring and highly charged theme for thousands of years and Ryan knows this. Intuitively Ryan also knows that this is only sexy during a brief and very fleeting time in one’s life yet he painstakingly builds his paintings to last forever. Preparatory drawing, grasai underpainting and lead-white, all the right chemistry, Only the good shit here.

The Closer print edition consists of six works printed by
Transmission Atelier in an
extremely limited quantity of 10 signed and numbered archival
digital pigment on Silver Gloss Type “F” archival edition paper.
Each print is framed in black under UV Plexiglass with entirely
archival materials.

Jason
20 x 28 Digital Pigment on Silver Gloss Type F paper,
Numbered, Signed Lower Right,
Framed Edition of 10

Billy
24 x 36 Digital Pigment on Silver Gloss Type F paper,
Numbered, Signed Lower Right,
Framed Edition of 10

Self Portrait With Christmas Lights
36 x 20.25 Digital Pigment on Silver Gloss Type F paper,
Numbered, Signed Lower Right,
Framed Edition of 10

Jazmyne
21.5 x 28 Digital Pigment on Silver Gloss Type F paper,
Numbered, Signed Lower Right,
Framed Edition of 10

Ben
46 x 36.5 Digital Pigment on Silver Gloss Type F paper,
Numbered, Signed Lower Right,
Framed Edition of 10

Jakob Triptych
14 x 40 Digital Pigment on Silver Gloss Type F paper,
Numbered, Signed Lower Right,
Framed Edition of 10