Whitney Biennial 2017
Mar 17–June 11, 2017
John Riepenhoff
48
Floor 5
Born 1982 in Milwaukee, WI
Lives in Milwaukee, WI
John Riepenhoff founded the Green Gallery in Milwaukee in 2004, when he was twenty-two; his cousin Jake Palmert joined him in 2009. Over the past several years, Riepenhoff has merged his roles as artist and gallerist, resulting in projects such as The John Riepenhoff Experience, in which an artwork is shown in an intimate space approximately the size of a person’s head. The name of the project “was a comment on ego in the art world,” Riepenhoff has said. “I like to think of a gallery as larger than the identity of the gallerist who started it, so I made the smallest gallery I could and named it after myself.” With his series Handler, Riepenhoff pays homage to the invisible machinations of the art world. Each sculpture consists of a pair of legs, made from papier-mâché and modeled on the artist’s own, that supports a two-dimensional work by another artist.
Handler, 2015
John Riepenhoff (b. 1982), Handler, 2015. Papier-mâché, figerglass, wood, wire, fabric and shoes, 50 × 19 × 14 in. (127 × 48.3 × 35.6 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Marlborough Contemporary, New York. With Peter Barrickman, November Edit, 2017. Acrylic, pigmented foil, tape splicer, lighting gels, vinyl siding, spackle, rocks, plastic labels, cardboard and paper on panel, 44 ½ x 36 in. (113 x 91.4 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy The Green Gallery, Milwaukee. Photograph by Bill Orcutt