Jonathan Ryan’s compositions are pictorial puzzles, evoking either a distant future or some remote corner of our current world. Drawing inspiration from ancient ruins, industrial landscapes and the backgrounds of digital video games, the artist affixes sifted sand and decomposed granite directly to his work—creating built up surfaces that interact with the paint in intricate ways. Ryan renders plateaus, crater-like indentations and hillocks with delicate shading, evoking the visual effect of trompe l'oeil—a kind of 3D optical illusion used throughout art history.