Torben Ribe

Torben Ribe’s works cut and paste the literal into the language of abstraction. Woodchip wallpaper, insisted on by landlords to cover dents and knocks in walls and painstakingly removed by aspirational property buyers re-enters their home as the surface of a seemingly abstract painting. A corner of his parents bedroom, influenced by TV DIY shows, themselves “inspired” by modernist design, become not just the subject but the matter of painting. Other unavoidable daily banalities find place in the work, paintings covered in unpaid bills, a gif of the artists credit card projected, endlessly spinning onto a scratched canvas. Iphone and Ipad magazines “displayed” on paintings amplify the fascination with and immediate redundancy of the now. As a disobedient heir of modernism, Ribe is both challenging and quietly disruptive.

Torban Ribe has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Hussennot in Paris, David Risley Gallery in Copenhagen, IMO in Copenhagen, and BN 24 in Hamburg, among other venues. His work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as National Gallery of Iceland in Reykjavik, Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, Royal College of Art in London, KUMU Art Museum of Estonia in Tallinn, and West in The Hague.