William Turner Gallery is proud to present a small solo exhibition of paintings by artist Lawrence Gipe called “Recent Pictures,” which draws from ongoing work addressing themes of progress, industrialization and the environment.

Two of the works are culled from the Russian Drone Paintings. This is Gipe’s latest series which employs the visual style of “Manifest Destiny” canvasses of the 19th Century, in a reference to the Industrial Revolution - the historical origin of all our ecological peril. The image sources are contemporary, based on screenshots of drone footage posted on the now-censored RT news service run by the Russian government. The Russian Drone Paintings engage issues like surveillance, climate change, and the Anthropocene, seen through the lens of our global “adversary,” in images of cities abandoned to radioactivity, bombardments, and other traumatic evidence of humanity’s relentless intervention into Nature.

In another recent series, The Great Fog and Other London Pictures, Gipe uses photos and stills from period newsreels to create a series on the subject of London’s toxic “Pea-Soupers” during the intense rebuilding after World War II. Gipe is interested in the role painting has had (and will continue to have) in the representation of climate change vis-à-vis Romantic tropes, engaging in a conversation about the rapidly transforming notion of the Capitalist Sublime.

ABOUT LAWRENCE GIPE:

Born in Baltimore in 1962, Gipe has had 70 solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Munich, Berlin, Düsseldorf (Kunstverein Düsseldorf.) Currently, he splits his time between his studio in Los Angeles, CA, and Tucson, AZ, where he is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at the University of Arizona. Gipe has received two NEA Individual Fellowship Grants (Painting, 1989 and Works on Paper, 1996.) A mid-career survey, 3 Five-Year Plans: Lawrence Gipe, 1990-2005, was organized in 2006 by Marilyn Zeitlin at the University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona.   

Articles and reviews about his work have appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Art and Antiques, L.A. Weekly, The Washington Post Magazine, Juxtapoz, Architectural Digest, Elle, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe, ArtForum, ArtNews, Artscene LA, San Francisco Chronicle, SFAQ, Fabrik LA, Art in America, Flash Art, Village Voice,Time Out New York; Kunstforum (Germany); BijutsuTecho (Japan) and many others.