Ivan Riascos

the odd I see/ my Odyssey

March 4 - April 15, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 4, 4-7 PM

Artist Talk: Friday, March 24, 11 AM

About the Exhibition:

For his second alt_space exhibition at Arts on Douglas, multi-disciplinary artist and diarist Ivan Riascos presents two distinct yet interrelated bodies of work: the odd I see / my Odyssey. 

The odd I see is a series of collages that reference the visual odyssey of his experiences in gender, race, and identity through imagery culled and recontextualized from National Geographic’s book titled Odyssey, The Art of Photography. This publication is a collection of work from their library of the 158 best photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

In his exhibition statement, Riascos explains that the idea for this project evolved from an ongoing interest in, “how photography, throughout history, has created specific narratives in photojournalism, travel, fashion, storytelling, documentary, etc. In particular, who determines which images represent subjects such as war, suffering, fashion, beauty, ugliness, strength, pain, etc.?”   When considering how an editor establishes these narratives in a book or magazine, he also realized that by appropriating photographs from these books, he could create his own imagery, and perspectives, like an editor.

Riascos sets up constraints for himself when working on projects. For this series, he decided to use each image from the book only once, noting that “this does not include the back of the image or the negative/positive space the image holds in the book, so technically, one embodiment can be used up to four times throughout the series.”

Complementing this series, Riascos created a site-specific installation titled My Odyssey, in which he presents a collaged visual journal of images relevant to his life.

About the Artist:

Ivan Riascos is an interdisciplinary artist. Earning his BFA degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an emphasis in photography in 2008. In 2014 he earned his MFA degree in Emerging Media at the University of Central Florida and was awarded the MFA Provost Fellowship. He recently was one of the finalists for Pathways 2022: The Carlos Malamud Prize. He has exhibited in-group shows in Atlanta, Chicago, Milwaukee, Orlando, and Tampa.

Ivan was born in Southern California to parents that immigrated from Colombia and has resided in the Central Florida area since the age of 7. He considers himself a diarist and an anthropologist in his practice, using various mediums such as sculpture, photography, collage, painting, ready-mades, and ceramics to address identity, religion, family, memories, perception, and relationships.

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