CONTEMPORARIES
CHANGE OF SCENERY A Dallas favorite, Milwaukee gallerist and artist John Riepenhoff enjoys the view. INTERVIEW BY CHRIS BYRNE
John Riepenhoff in his studio. Photograph by Daniel McCullough.
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John Riepenhoff’s work has been shown extensively in the US and abroad, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Elaine de Kooning House in East Hampton. His current exhibition— Scene Painters’ Almanac—is on view at Various Small Fires through February 18 and features a series of plein air paintings that began beneath the Milwaukee night sky. Riepenhoff is also the owner and director of The Green Gallery. Chris Byrne talks with the artist/gallerist about his time in Dallas. John Riepenhoff, Handler (Michelle Grabner), 2014, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art, Dallas
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PATRONMAGAZINE.COM
Chris Byrne (CB): Scene Painters’ Almanac is your current exhibition in Dallas—how did the show come about? John Riepenhoff (JR): In June of 2022, I debuted a group of paintings at Broadway New York that took the premise of my night sky plein air paintings and expanded the process over multiple nights for each painting. Lisa Cooley invited me to do a series for Various Small Fires. I was thrilled to make this body of work for Dallas and as it happens, VSF Gallery is in a space that Joe Cole of Broadway Gallery used to operate, Ten Over Six, attached to The Joule. CB: In 2014, The Joule organized an installation of your Handler series... JR: My Handler series is realistic-looking sculptural facsimiles of the lower half of my body, and they are open-ended collaborative pieces that can hold various 2D works by other artists. I have shown these in Dallas at TWO x TWO. The Joule got a collection of the Handler series early on, and they’ve made special appearances around their hotel ever since. CB: In addition, you had the opportunity to visit the Dallas Contemporary, Nasher Sculpture Center, as well as private collections... JR: I’m really impressed at every level of the art scene here. The number and quality of the institutions, the private collections, artistrun scene, and support for contemporary artists in Dallas made an early and sustained impact on me, and I’m thrilled to be part this year through this show. CB: And The Green Gallery facilitated the DMA’s acquisition of Michelle Grabner’s Untitled, 2016... JR: Yes, the DMA has an incredible collection, and I’m honored to have helped connect Michelle Grabner and Margaret Lee with them. CB: What upcoming projects can we look forward to? JR: After this painting series at Various Small Fires Dallas, I’ll have a piece at their Los Angeles space. Then I’m gearing up for a show at La Maison de Rendez-Vous in Brussels in April. Also that month, I’m opening a major survey show of many of my bodies of works, including new and classic beer-and-cheese pieces, a meta gallery, the Handler series, and more Skies paintings at Good Weather Gallery in North Little Rock. P