Timothy Ripley

Gallery Affiliations: Denise Bibro Fine Arts

Region: Midwest

Website: http://www.timothyripley.com

City / State: Chicago, IL

My work involves a pseudo-scientific examination of absurd, abstracted biological forms rendered in polymer clay and depicted at a highly magnified scale. I first photograph the iconic forms, then digitally alter the image, create a high-quality print of the digital file, and finally translate this image into paint. In doing so, I blur the distinctions between painting, sculpture, digital modeling, and photography. This allows me to explore the ambiguities and distortions that occur within our highly mediated environment.

The forms that I build and then distort reflect my fascination with biology and mathematics. I fetishize these strange cellular clay shapes by painting their image with an obsessive attention to surface and to the play of light. I want to represent science as sexual, mysterious, and bombastic, but also to convey that science has a dark side.