Paper Economy, 2022, linocut, color plate, paper, print 9” x 9” (paper size 14” x 13”), unframed

These block prints are the precursor to a series of work made by Ronnie Rysz depicting foreclosed homes in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 2010s.

Volatile shifts in the housing market continue to disproportionately affect a shrinking middle class, the working class, younger generations, and other disadvantaged populations. This suite of prints questions the concept of owning property and who benefits from financial practices and protections in the United States.

In developing his work, the artist was inspired by security patterns found inside envelopes from bank and credit card statements, representations of American currency, stocks, bonds, barcodes, maps of Connecticut, and other financial ephemera. These aesthetic elements are carved into linoleum, which is a construction material sometimes used as flooring in residential and commercial real estate.

Through this combination, Ronnie creates eerily familiar associations to documents assuming monetary value and legal importance, while unraveling the perception of stability they too often depict.

Collaborators

To create these block prints, Ronnie worked with printmakers from Milestone Graphics, the oldest continuously operating printshop in Connecticut. For more information about the work, visit ronnierysz.com/foreclosures.

I live and work in Connecticut where I manage Ronnie Rysz Studio and architecture-based communications for Yale University. Additionally, I co-run a writing project, Rysz + Rysz, which explores creative combinations of people, places, and pastimes across the world.

I am the recipient of a Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism fellowship; Change, Inc. grant; and Vermont Studio Center fellowship. Selections of my work are included in the following collections: Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Housatonic Museum of Art, Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, Print Club of Albany, and Slater Memorial Museum as well as many private collections. My work has been exhibited nationally, including shows at the 808 Gallery at Boston University, Akus Gallery at Eastern Connecticut State University, Artspace NH, Brian Morris Gallery + Buddy Warren Inc., Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Real Art Ways, and Silvermine Arts Center, among others.

In 2006, I received a BFA from Lyme Academy College of Fine Art in Old Lyme and studied fine art and design at the School of Visual Arts in New York. My formative experience also includes assisting James Reed, founder and master printer emeritus at Milestone Graphics, and Randy Davis, principal painter at Off the Wall Murals; working in communications for the Yale Center for British Art; and teaching printmaking at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking and Western Connecticut State University.

https://www.ronnierysz.com/

@ronnie_rysz