Robert Rauschenberg has said of his Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953, that he initially erased his own drawings but “figured out that the erased drawing had to be from a real work of art” to have significance. Matt Bryans’s drawings, produced by erasing images printed on pieces of newspaper recovered from the streets of London, suggest an opposing principle: that erasure can serve as a means of transfiguring humble found material into art.

The way Bryans erases is notably different from Rauschenberg’s approach: Whereas the latter sought to eradicate de Kooning’s marks, Bryans does not so much