The House That Bock Built

“The whole series boils down to storytelling and how that creates biases within nations. Germany is very well known for its fairy tales, which have all been taken by Disney and Americanized. A prime example is the Brothers Grimm stories. [They’ve been] given American values. Every nation is guilty of this,” says Ryan Bock, the elegant and poised visual artist responsible for the paintings in LICH, his one-man show curated by Celine Cunha at the Lower East Side’s Ki Smith Gallery.

Bock continues: “The works here are either based on fairy tales or real-life events to highlight this whole sort of obsession with fake news and what is real, what is not. All these alternative histories exist depending on your nationality, your religion, your beliefs. The idea [of the installation] is to juxtapose these two different things.”

The American artist, who lives and works in New York City, specializes in painting, drawing, puppetry, animation, and experimental film methods. Since receiving his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ryan Bock has shown at numerous galleries both nationally and internationally. He currently shows with Ki Smith Gallery (NYC) and Ground Effect (Paris) and has works in several prominent private and public collections.

Bock’s vision usually shows itself in a black, white, and gray color palette, calling it “optically violent” and explaining, “I’m obsessed with the 1920s, especially German Expressionism in film, so it’s a homage to those historical moments.” But an exception has been made for this series, where he added a fourth color.

“I was in Germany, and a lot of the houses are painted brown. I wanted to introduce something more human, more earthy, and balanced out the sort of mechanical nature of my usual decision-making.”

Ki Smith, whose gallery prides itself on disrupting standard industry practices by representing a carefully selected group of artists with diverse backgrounds, methods, and aesthetics, and who has had a professional relationship with Bock for a decade, agreed that, on an aesthetic level, the introduction of brown was “phenomenal.” He also acknowledged “the extra layer of depth and the dimensionality and the complexity of form” that come through in this new set of paintings.

Developed during a three-month residency in Lich, Germany, the ancestral town where Bock’s family traces back to the 1700s, the exhibition reflects the residency and history with its title.

“A family member traced our lineage to this tiny village 45 minutes outside of Frankfurt. I went there for an unveiling of a “Stolpersteine”—a stumbling stone—for my ancestors, which is a little metal placard outside of people’s houses [honoring those] who were taken by the Nazis.

“That was in 2023, and I was blown away and felt I needed to go back and spend some time there. The following year, I went for three months, and I created these works.” Smith loved the idea that the artist was going to explore his family’s heritage as a jumping-off point for his work.

Upon seeing the results of Bock’s residency, the gallerist was impressed by how the work of his colleague of many years had evolved. “Ryan’s a rare case; that’s probably one of the reasons why we’ve had such a long and fruitful relationship. To me, these works are really special for a few different reasons, one being they’re the most personal works that he’s ever done.”

Smith further explained that for Bock to bring his personal history into his art gives “another depth and layer to the body of work,” and says that this is by far the most vulnerable body of work Bock has ever created.

He praised Bock for “an incredible job” and referred to the series as a portal for visitors to think more deeply about certain things that are going on.

“I think that each one of these pieces is such a powerful window into a moment for reflection, and it lets people think about the message behind the paintings and how they might be able to take those messages further and implement them into their lives.”

According to the gallery’s literature, LICH destabilizes linear history and compels us to ask: Who authors the narratives we inherit, and at whose expense?

You’ll have to answer that yourself when you see the show.

Ryan Bock’s LICH will exhibit at the Ki Smith Gallery, 170 Forsyth St., until Nov. 23, 2025. Open Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novel “The Last Single Woman in New York City.”