Postmasters Gallery in Tribeca was teeming with beautiful people at last Saturday’s opening for the solo openings of Ryder Ripps’ Ho and Katarzyna Kozyra’s Looking for Jesus.
Ryder Ripps, described by the New York Times as an artist of the internet presented his series of oil paintings rendered from images off the internet model, Adrianne Ho’s instagram account. These images were then digitally manipulated, contorted, and pulled to create an aura where the hypocrisy of today’s societal norms of beauty is almost ridiculed. Ripp, through his distortions, elicits some uncomfortable feelings where lumps grow out of faces, waists are cinched to unimaginable narrowness, eyes melt down in Daliesque form, and noses are so overgrown that they take up the entire canvas. These paintings become beautiful in all their grotesqueness.
In a viewing room on the side of the gallery, Katarzyna Kozyra’s film Looking for Jesus explores the notion of finding the Messiah in Israel. Her road trip like film draws you in slowly until your mesmerized and looking forward to hearing the stories told by the next person interviewed who professes his sureness of being the messiah, or the reincarnation of Jesus. If you have a chance to go to Postmaster’s, this film is not to be missed!
Perceptions are turned on their heels in both these extraordinary shows. But the fact that you can bring together Ho’s and Jesus is a miraculous revelation that can only happen in the art universe!
Ryder Ripps: Ho
Katarzyna Kozyra: Looking for Jesus
On View: January 24 – February 28, 2015
Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday (11 – 6 pm) Thursday (11 – 8pm)
Postmasters Gallery. 54 Franklin Street. NYC, NY 10013
Article and Photography by: Olya Turcihin
