Solo show
Mel Ramos' provocative paintings and prints put him on the map as an important Pop
artist. Over 30 years along with the heroes and heroines of popular comic series,
nude, female bodies of male phantasies depicted with bold outline and bright colours
dominate his artistic oeuvre. They are not beautiful by nature in the classical
sense, they are more farcically and constructed in their stainlessness and glamour.
He supports this staginess by pairing them with artefacts of American consumerism,
which are courting with their own seductive idealization.
These pin ups, whose type
he took from calendar art, the girlie illustrations and the Playboy magazine, are
recovered in a synthetic world, bedded on fruits, at posing with larger than life
consumer goods, at the game with lifelike animals, viewed trough a keyhole and shown
in the same attitude as the great nudes of the art history. (Catalogue is in
preparation).
Biography
Mel Ramos was born in Sacramento, California, 1935. 1958 Master of Arts Degree from
the California State University, Sacramento, 1967-1997 Teaching at the California
State University, Hayward.
He lives and works in Oakland, California and Horta de Sant Juan, Spain.
Hilger Contemporary
Dorotheergasse 5 - Wien
Free admission