RYAN STANDFEST

Ryan Standfest (b. 1974 Detroit, MI) is an artist and publisher based in Detroit. With irony, his work renders modernity's destructive progress as small and absurd. He has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; The Detroit Institute of Arts; Wasserman Projects, Detroit; and Western Exhibitions, Chicago, among others. In 2020, the Detroit-based Simone DeSousa Gallery (now Matéria) published a monograph of his work. In 2010, he founded the small publishing house Rotland Press, for which he has edited a collection of comic strips by artist and filmmaker David Lynch, two volumes of political prints by Sue Coe, and a collection of early satirical cartoons by Swiss artist H.R. Giger. The press has been recognized in Art In America, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, and PRINT. As an arts writer, Standfest has authored arts criticism and essays, appearing in numerous art and culture journals. He contributed a chapter to the book Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance, edited by Elliott H. King and Abigail Susik (Penn State University Press, 2022). Standfest earned an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa in Iowa City and a BFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Wayne State University in Detroit. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.