DIA exhibition features work from OU Assistant Professor Ryan Standfest

Ryan Standfest, a visiting assistant professor of art at Oakland University, is one of the featured artists whose work is displayed in the new Printmaking in the Twenty-First Century exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA).

The free exhibit, which will be on display until April 9, celebrates the range of ingenuity of artwork my contemporary printmakers. It includes more than 60 prints, posters, and artists’ books by both national and local arts.

False Development Promises Sales Case

Schlückbilder for Henry Ford

“This exhibition highlights the works of both established and emerging artists, many of whom have local connections,” said Clare Rogan, curator of Prints and Drawings. “Visitors have the opportunity to explore the dynamic range of subject matter, technical innovation, and creativity of contemporary printmaking.” 

The printmaking exhibit includes works that use the latest digital tools, techniques introduced in the fifteenth century, and a combination of both. Many of the works on display are recent DIA acquisitions.

Standfest has two pieces — False Development Promises Sales Case (2018), linocut and letterpress, and Schlückbilder for Henry Ford (2017), letterpress, — in the exhibition.

“False Development Promises Sales Case uses satire to take aim at the greed embodied by business practices, usually of a corporate nature, that all too often feeds on our cities without a consideration of community equity,” Standfest said. “My second piece, Schlückbilder, means ‘pictures for swallowing.'

This depicts nine rows of nine small portraits of Henry Ford, which the print instructs the user / viewer to cut off and eat once a day, either by taking as a ‘pill’ with water, or combining into baked goods.”

To learn more about Printmaking in the Twenty-First Century and other DIA programming, visit www.dia.org.