Ryan Bock specializes in painting, drawing, puppetry, animation, and experimental film techniques. Bock's practice is grounded in a need for narrative structure. Situated somewhere between mythology and nightmare, Bock depicts a stage filled with symbols and allusions both cinematic and pictorial. Fascinated by forms, shadows, structures, and optical illusions, Bock deconstructs his subject into often barely recognizable delineations and repetitive patterns without structure. In an attempt to confront the contemporary individual's relationship to mortality, fear, and superstition, Bock depicts the correlations between the human figure and its innovations: technology, architecture, and religion - both historically and fictively. By constantly juxtaposing historical subjects with those of the present and using the recurring patterns found to generate predictions about our future - a process he terms "dusty futurism" - Bock prompts his audience to reconsider the routine human experience and unveils the illusions implemented to prevent self-questioning.