John Wolf is honored to present work by Nathan Ritterpusch, Thomas Linder and Judy Chicago.
Between a Frock and a Hard Place explores the alcoves of the nostalgic mind through a lens of erotic and intellectual intrigue… in a knowing way. Inspired by Nathan Ritterpusch’s, Old Enough To Be My Mother series, which are largely based off of vintage pinup magazines from the 1960’s. These paintings explore current notions of beauty, ephemerality and Ritterpusch’s curious relationship to the
women that are contemporaries of his mother. Ritterpusch represents these seductive portraits in a disruptive manor, while these electrically charged paintings allow nostalgia and eroticism to resurface, they seem to be captured in the fraction of a moment, like a fading memory.
The exhibit is centered with Judy Chicago’s “Rainbow Man.” The work portrays a man crouching in a position acknowledging his fragility, his deference to his emotional power. Flanked by Thomas Linder’s rainbow-like colorful abstraction, the viewer is confronted with themes of acceptance and beauty.
Nathan Ritterpusch was born in Harrisburg, PA and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work utilizes personal and found photography, representational painting, and abstract patterns to interrogate the ephemeral qualities of beauty and desire. A graduate of Maryland Institute, College of Art (1999), Ritterpusch has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. Recent exhibitions include: "Post Analog"; at The Hole, NY, "The Night is Dark"; RMCAD, Denver, "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams", RARE, NY and "I Thought I Was Someone Else", Galerie Burkhard Eikelmann, Dusseldorf.
Thomas Linder (b. 1986, Saint Paul, MN) currently works in Los Angeles, California. The artist's process as a sculptor utilizes wood and fiberglass to create paintings and modular sculptures that interact with their setting’s light sources to activate, reflect, and project translucent planes of color. Linder received his BFA in Sculpture and Community Arts from Kansas City Art Institute in 2008, and his MFA in Sculpture from Bowling Green State University in 2011. Linder’s work has been exhibited at Ibid Gallery, Los Angeles, Linder is also co-founder of the Los Angeles artist-run gallery, BBQLA.
Born July 20, 1939, Judy Chicago is an artist, author, feminist, educator, and intellectual whose career now spans five decades. Her influence both within and beyond the art community is attested to by her inclusion in hundreds of publications throughout the world. Her art has been frequently exhibited in the United States as well as in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.