“W.O.W. (What Once Was)“ presents Max Rippon’s latest works on canvas and wood. The exhibition’s title refers to the fundamental transience of modern life – the constant process of creation, destruction, and transformation in the material just as much as the immaterial. A new series of the artist’s “news headline“ canvases will be presented. Through layers of hand-painted lettering he explores the fast-paced, highly ephemeral business of the news media as well as the readers’ fragmented memory and perception of these events…
Rippon’s latest sculptural and wood pieces, however, are the highlight of this exhibition. He transforms handpainted lettering into wood sculptures and wood collages on canvas through an elaborate production process including calligraphy, 3D-modeling, digital fabrication, and traditional wood finishing techniques. These highly delicate works blur the line between the perfection of digital technologies and the imperfections and organic nature of the analogue processes. During the exhibition’s opening visitors are to expect an incendiary performance.
Max (Ripo) Rippon was born and raised in NYC and currently resides in Barcelona, Spain. He began drawing from a very young age and with time his inspirations grew from comic books to skateboarding and graffiti as well as an art education and studying of art history. After graduating with a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis he left the United States for Barcelona, Spain where he has since been based. His work has become primarily text-based, exploring and communicating through typography, calligraphy and other hand-painted elements. His rhetoric often proposes questions rather than answers, always with a sense of sarcasm and humor crawling below the surface. He has had solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Barcelona, Brussels, and Vienna and exhibited in various international group shows including the 11 Spring St. Show in New York City, called one of the best art shows of 2006 by the NY Times. He has also painted murals legally and illegally in cities, remote villages, and abandoned structures across 36 countries in three continents.
www.RIPOVISUALS.com
