ArtStar Studio Visit with Ryan Metke - This painting explores the phenomenon of the Cargo Cult. Particularly the Jon Frum Cult in the South-Pacific. The images within Ryan’s paintings are a topographical collage of human senses and symbols. The profound is pitted against the ordinary, and familiar signage and icons of household branding are given new interpretation. What the viewer may perceive as primal rants may be, in fact, intimate confessions pitted against a backdrop of sterile iconography. Other times, child-like scribble and ‘cave drawings’ are handled with precise intent and mature composition. In the end the intent is for the viewers to interpret for themselves the nature of who they are in a larger context.
