RYAN WALLACE & JOHN RIEPENHOFF at the ELAINE de KOONING HOUSE | JULY – AUGUST, 2017

July – August 2017
East Hampton, NY


The Elaine de Kooning House is pleased to announce an exhibition by John Riepenhoff (with Jerry “the Marble Faun” Torre) and Ryan Wallace.

Milwaukee-based artist John Riepenhoff has dedicated his work to embracing an ever-expanding network of collaborators, audiences, non-profit business ventures, brewers, cheesemakers, venues and social interactions. Through presentations of local and international artists at his Green Gallery in Milwaukee, and within the structure of his own paintings and sculpture, Riepenhoff acts as a conduit and multiplier for the efforts of others. By providing these platforms for the distribution of materials and ideas, he expands the cultural reach of his beloved hometown, while effectively erasing ideas of its separateness from the rest of the art world.

His residency at the Elaine de Kooning House will continue this tendency with the unveiling of a new John Riepenhoff Experience sculpture. This series of interactive pieces consist of a ladder leading to a small box with an opening just big enough for one person to stick his/her head into. Inside, one sees a miniature group or solo exhibition by an artist of Riepenhoff’s choosing. During the residency, this tiny venue, in keeping with Riepenhoff’s support of known local artists, will include works by the legendary Grey Gardens’ groundskeeper Jerry “the Marble Faun”.

Where Riepenhoff’s experience manifests as a compacted room, Ryan Wallace’s installation is a space, unfolded. Wallace’s output is a cycle of continuously constructed, razed, rebuilt, and re-flattened information. Like a pitch of fossils, the Elaine de Kooning House installation is an optical vista of objects and tiles that both support and trap the materials employed in his work.

Wallace’s stacked sculptures combine Carl Andre’s floor pieces and the serial reproduction of Sol Lewitt with an additional expressionist gesture; Minimalism gone rogue. These objects serve as surrogate paintings for the artist, incorporating materials that have been cast off, removed, and redacted from previous works in the act of making. The square tiles now carpeting the floor had previous lives as earlier floor installations shattered and stuffed inside earlier sculptures and inlaid in earlier paintings. The waste products of one system become the building blocks of another. While satisfying as sculpture, Wallace’s vision is actually quite painterly, with the artist’s use of shared language and material calling our attention to his gestural mark-making in the real space of his aesthetic mise-en-scènes.

To schedule a visit you can contact:
contact@elainedekooninghouse.org
elainedekooninghouse.org
tel: (631) 604-5882
or me at:
ryan@ryanmwallace.com

Ryan Wallace was born in 1977 in New York City, and lives and works in Brooklyn and East Hampton. Recent solo exhibitions include Susan Inglett Gallery, New York; 56 Henry, New York; Romer Young, San Francisco; Cooper Cole, Toronto. Upcoming exhibitions include appearances at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; Albada Jelgersma Gallery, Amsterdam; and a two person museum show with Rosy Keyser curated by Jaime DeSimone at MECA, Portland. Wallace is also a curator and the co-owner of Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton. His works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; RISD Museum, Providence; Watermill Center, Watermill, Long Island; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, among others. He was a 2011 Pollack-Krasner Grant awardee. Wallace is represented in New York by Susan Inglett Gallery.

John Riepenhoff was born in 1982 in Milwaukee, WI where he lives and received a BFA from the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. He is represented by Marlborough Contemporary. Riepenhoff is also a curator and co-owner of The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI, collaborator at The Open, co-organizer of Milwaukee International and Dark Fairs, is an inventor of artistic platforms for the expression of others and regular food ideator. His recent exhibitions and curatorial projects have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Marlborough Chelsea, and Swiss Institute New York, NY; Tate Modern, London; Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR; 356 Mission Rd, Los Angeles, CA; Poor Farm, WI; Lynden Sculpture Garden, Inova, and The Suburban, Milwaukee, WI; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; and Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA. He also continues a program of the John Riepenhoff Experience at various locations around the world, including at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Misako and Rosen, Tokyo. He was the 2015 Milwaukee Arts Board Artist of the Year, co-chairs Friends of Blue Dress Park, founded Milwaukee’s first Beer Endowment for artist-run organizations, runs The Oven at The Open in Milwaukee, and sits on the board of Riverwest Radio.