Ryan Tomcho "Linger" at WPA, Los Angeles, CA

Ryan Tomcho's lush canvasses approach painting through nontraditional means. Pigment here is encapsulated in resin and applied by a machine. The trace of the hand is taken hostage by imposter brush marks which weren't created in the physical sense. They only exist as artificial imitations applied as a very thin layer of pigment. The surface is treated as if it were a space where events float in, and not as a crust with material density. These events are moments where one edge, illusion, color, structure, and imposter mark interacts with another in a way which activates sensory experience. Space is stretched and manipulated to expand possibilities of a pictorial experience which is not tethered by a unified whole. One could even say they're a space of fantasy. Each, fortunately, can look quite unlike another, though repetition is not necessarily excluded.
Sure, these were produced with a technological apparatus, but that doesn't mean they're limited to a discourse on technology and its modes of production. How it's made is ideally not as important as what it's doing, which is to say the engagement exceeds the means of production.