Face in Clouds, invisible ink | Ryan Woodring

The title Face in Clouds, invisible ink refers to an emoji that the artist sends loved ones as shorthand for flare-ups; a simple data point for a diagnostically-avoidant experience. Sending the emoji with the “invisible ink” effect, shatters it into glimmering pixels that reconsolidate only upon touch. The works in this exhibition engage in similar cycles of rendering and refusal, bobbing at the surface of communicable experience in a post-AI landscape of hyper-classification. 

Stemming from ritualized visualization practices, each work functions as a procedural export from a mediated exchange between an internal affliction and its speculative materialization. For example, in the series of 3D-printed candies Today (and Possibly Tomorrow) Woodring 3D models the contours of his illness while experiencing its impact on his life. As he writes in his statement about the piece: “Each model is made while experiencing the sensation it attempts to give form to. Employing basic tenets of art therapy and pain management such as creative engagement and distraction, the act of modeling transforms the signified (the effects of my illness momentarily lessening) and signifier (the 3D-model) in its process.” Similarly, the series of drawings titled Sick and Tired at the Met–present in the gallery as an installation and coloring book–is the manifestation of an on-site performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in which Woodring drew every object defined by the museum's search engine as either “sick” or “tired” for 17 minutes each - the average amount of time an American spends with their doctor per visit. 

Expanding on the relevant themes and multimedia qualities of the exhibition, there will be unique educational opportunities for visitors to learn and meet the artist including a drawing workshop inspired by the drawing practice used for creating Sick and Tired at the Met, a hybrid 3D modelling workshop, tours and talks. 

About the Artist

Ryan Woodring (he/they) is compelled by his body’s furtive miscalibration to find sustained agency for unpredictable and illegible modes of being using experimental, time-based visualization practices. He draws from a decade of experience as a visual effects artist helping to realize award-winning projects such as House of Cards and Kubo & the Two Strings, as well as an extensive teaching and arts organizing practice. He recently founded the Soft Data/Base, a net archive compiling artistic practices that create soft data for illegible experience, and co-founded Prequel Low-Residency in Portland, Oregon. 

Woodring earned his MFA from Rutgers University and is currently Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Drew University in New Jersey. He has exhibited and spoken internationally in various contexts such as The Museum of the Moving Image, Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, The International Museum of Surgical Science, the Portland Biennial, and elsewhere, receiving project support from the The Andy Warhol Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council Oregon, Institute of Network Cultures, and others. His work has been included in publications such as Hyperallergic, Interview Magazine, and Redefine Magazine. 

His writing has been published by the International Journal of Education in the Arts and Irrelevant Press. He is a 2025 Grand Rounds speaker at Mayo Clinic. Woodring lives in New York, where he is a member of Blockbusters Video and New Media Collective.

Image: Ryan Woodring, spot healing 2024. Single channel video. 9 minutes. Size variable. Alt id: An HD (16x9) video still depicting three men in just about the same standing side-pose in a well-lit apartment. 2 of the characters are 3D-modeled construction workers identifiable by hard-hats and tool belts while the third is a white male in his thirties who tries imitating their posture.