Sarah Ryan has been following up her keen interest in lenticular techniques for some time now, and she is one of few artists working with digital lenticular photography. The pictures generated in this way convey the optical effect of three-dimensionality and/or a flowing motion within the image.
Lenticular images are found most frequently as 3D-postcards or on souvenirs or gift articles. In the field of artistic applications, the digital lenticular technique now facilitates just as many possibilities. Sarah Ryan employs this technique and specifically its quality of making things seem slightly ‘non-static’, as if in fluid motion, in order to inspire viewers to see in different ways with her works, which actually capture rather unspectacular motifs. Ryan keeps the images ‘at a distance’ to the viewer, and in this way creates ambiguous situations that permit a variety of interpretations.
The exhibition “the clearing” shows a series of new works which only hesitantly unfold and which are meant to deliberately slow down the process of viewing and deciphering. The dichotomy of emotions and thought, which the artist believes that the lenticular medium reflects excellently with its “lack of clarity” and striving for depth, is also mirrored in the title that Ryan has chosen for the exhibition: on the one hand, the clearing refers to a physical clearing (in the forest), and on the other hand, it also signifies the clearance of an empty physic space or the process of mental “clearing”.