Assistant Professor
Painting & Drawing
BFA Virginia Commonwealth University; MFA Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design
Lawrence Gipe born: 1962 in Baltimore, Maryland Lives in Santa Barbara, California
Lawrence Gipe's work derives from propaganda and other ideologically framed sources. Gipe's paintings and drawings are informed by images found in advertisements and posters, “fine art” photographs, and tourist ephemera published under the auspices of totalitarian/monolithic political movements(ranging from mid-1930’s Nazi, WPA, and Stalinist “Five-Year Plan” imagery to recent-day military recruiting and corporate web-based “motivational” materials). For the past 15 years, Gipe has pursued a project concerned with demonstrating the porous and interchangeable nature of authoritarian tropes throughout the 20th Century; and addressing how these tropes manifested visually in mass-produced propaganda, by re-enacting them in the context of painting.
Lawrence Gipe began his career in Los Angeles with a series of exhibitions addressing the themes of industrialization, progress and ideological photography. He has had 35 solo exhibitions in US galleries and museums in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and, internationally in Munich, Berlin, and the Künstverein Düsseldorf.
Lawrence Gipe's latest solo exhibition, "One Picture and the Next Three" opened in January 2007 at Alexander Gray Associates, New York. A mid-career survey, “3 Five-Year Plans: Lawrence Gipe 1990-2005”, was organized by Marilyn Zeitlin at the University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona in June, 2006. In 2001, Gipe completed a mural commission for the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, in a building designed by Robert A.A.Stern. He has been awarded two NEA Fellowships in 1989 and 1995. Gipe has curated numerous exhibitions, the latest being “North x Northwest”, a group show of work by Santa Barbara artists.
Articles and reviews of Gipe’s works have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Art and Antiques, L.A. Weekly, Architectural Digest, Elle, The Los Angeles Times, Talk, ArtForum, ArtNews, Art in America , Flash Art, Village Voice, Time Out, Kunstforum and others.
Gipe’s work is collected by individuals and institutions all over the world including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach , Florida and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York .
e-mail: lgipe@email.arizona.edu office: 520.621.1935
Art Bldg, Room 322
http://www.gipepictures.com http://www.alexandergray.com
