Familiarity into unsettling circumstances

Ryden's art depicts Surrealists’ fascination with the subconscious and collective memories. However, he transcends the initial Surrealists’ strategies by consciously choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation. His cuddly plush pets, alchemical symbols, religious emblems, primordial landscapes and slabs of meat challenge you with their own oddity.

There is a comforting beauty of his pop-culture references, that are then challenged by their circumstances, and finally transported to the artist’s final intent – a world where creatures speak from a place of childlike honesty about the state of mankind and our relationships with ourselves, each other and our past.

http://www.markryden.com/biography/index.html