John Riepenhoff: Another Scene Painters’ Almanac

About

Working outside under wintry, Midwestern skies and completed in the studio, the artist continues his project of reestablishing the natural in abstraction. Taking a cue from Korean Informel, Riepenhoff emphasizes the experiential condition of the process but, more importantly, employs this process as an extension of Nature rather than in opposition to it.  In short, Riepenhoff aims to transmit the essence of the night sky and his immersion in it. 

While fairly limited in palette and composed of a restricted lexicon of marks, the paintings display a surprising variety.  Showers of elliptical-shaped forms in various sizes form a staccato Morse code across the canvas which is built up with a ground of subtle color. The spaces around brush marks are as much constituent elements as the tone and surfaces of the strokes they contain. In another instance, orbs of white coagulate in a setting of airy pink and blue in the suggestion of sunset that leans more on feeling than depiction.

In this sense, as the exhibition title suggests, the works function as a kind of almanac for this moment of seeing via painting. The change of seasons, of light and atmosphere, of barometric pressure are explored through proxy pigment and the record of lived experience outdoors after dark.

As with his last presentation with the gallery, an owl keeps careful watch. This time cast in painted bronze, Riepenhoff’s feathered stand-in presides over these nocturnes like a knowledgeable guest, connecting us to the specific ecological, cosmological, and earthly perspective of their creation.