LAB: Empirical Evidence: John Ruppert

The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents an exhibition of work by artist John Ruppert entitled LAB: Empirical Evidence: John Ruppert. The exhibition will span the artist’s recent explorations with installation, sculptural objects, photography, and sound as it relates to the world around us. Influenced by his intense interest in natural phenomena, Ruppert’s overarching investigation will focus on the intersection of the natural world and humanity. In a broader sense, he seeks to develop a heightened consciousness of our precarious existence on the planet.

LAB: Empirical Evidence: John Ruppert represents the first exhibition in a new series where an individual artist is invited to orchestrate his or her pieces and/or series within the CADVC’s main gallery space to produce a unique and comprehensive installation blurring the lines between art and science. Future exhibitions will explore the connections between textiles, drawing, painting, and sculpture, and the natural sciences, engineering, technology, and cultural politics.

Over the past 35 years, John Ruppert has been working in cast metals; manufactured materials such as chain-link fabric; mixed media; and more recently, video, digital 3D printing and digital composite photography — all in response to where natural order and human decision-making meet, and the paradoxes that lie between. His work stems from a long tradition of artists who have been inspired by the grand and sublime beauty of the land, from the ancient Chinese poets and artists of Tao to the 19th century American landscape painters and more recently, to artists working directly in the landscape considering our relationship to the environment.

Ruppert’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums, sculpture parks and galleries both in the United States and abroad. Reviews of his work have been published in Art in America, New Art Examiner, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and The New York Times with feature articles in Art China and most recently Sculpture magazine.

Ruppert has participated in several artists in residency programs and has received numerous awards including five Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist grants, the Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, which included an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and most recently, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. He is a professor and former chair of the Department of Art at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has been on the faculty since 1987.

Photo: Installation view of John Ruppert, Bittersweet Vines, 2017-19, vines, rubber and silver leaf in site-specific installation (dimensions variable); John Ruppert, Granite Fissure 1/Yellow Sky – Lawrys Island, ME, 2013-14, 86″ x 42″ composite photograph archival print. Images courtesy of the artist and C Grimaldis Gallery.