Ryo Sawayama, born in Okayama in 1982, is an art critic and associate professor at Musashino Art University. Sawayama completed his Master’s degree at Musashino Art University, Tokyo. He received the first prize at the 14th Art Critic Awards sponsored by Bijutsu-Techo magazine (Tokyo) in 2009 for the essay “Labor-work: Carl Andre and His Concept of Art Making.” In 2020, his first book, Dynamics of Painting, was published by Shoshi Kankanbo (Fukuoka) as a collection of essays on postwar American and Japanese art. His publications include Ten Lectures on Contemporary Art (edited by Masayuki Tanaka, Musashino Art University Press, 2017) and Thinking About Painting Now (Suiseisha, 2023).