Ryder Ripps

Ripps is the creative director of OKFocus, a digital marketing and design agency and has developed content for musicians Kanye West, Travis Scott, Grimes, Drake, Diplo, M.I.A., Bruno Mars, and Mike Will Made It; fashion lines Gucci, Marc Jacobs, Kenzo, Stone Island, and FUCT; and corporate brands Nike, and Red Bull.[2] He has created several websites, including Internet Archeology, Dump.fm, and VFiles.[3][4][2] In 2013, Ripps created the branding for Soylent, an open source meal replacement drink.[5] In 2015 he co-produced 2 songs on Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz.[6] In 2018, Ripps began working with Kanye West as a part of DONDA. [7][8][9] Together, Ripps and West worked as creative directors for the first annual Pornhub awards in Los Angeles.[10][11]

Ripps's fine art practice is described as "art that uses online avenues to expose how social media can amplify narcissism and fear."[12]

In a 2014 piece titled ART WHORE the Ace Hotel in New York asked Ripps to be an artist-in-residence for 1 night.[13] With a $50 budget, Ripps hired 2 “sensual masseuses” from Craigslist to make work in a hotel room, with Ripps comparing this to his own exploitation as an artist.[9] The project sparked outcry, principally online, "for what they saw as blatant exploitation of women in the sex industry" even though one of the erotic masseuses was male.[14][15] Critic Paddy Johnson declared it one of the most offensive exhibitions of the year and Rhizome described it as "unthinking, unethical, and dull", but also that "Ripps acted in a way that was ethically unsound: It reinforced and did not interrogate inequitable power relationships."[16][17][18] In an interview, Ripps admits he regretted the title he chose.[15]

Ripps' first solo exhibition took place in January 2015 at Postmasters Gallery in New York City, titled Ho. It featured large-scale oil painted portraits of digitally manipulated images from the Instagram account of model Adrianne Ho.[12][19] The show "engages with the ways in which we portray women, tapping into the long history of the manipulation of images in the name of sex and advertisement."[19] However, reception was varied, with one critic writing: "his series is a visceral, knee-jerk way of removing and distorting a vision of female empowerment", and also notes the title of the show is a double entendre, as "ho" is slang for prostitute.[20][21]

In 2016, Ripps exhibited Barbara Lee, an ode to the representative in Congress featuring 50,000 images downloaded from the internet covering a maquette of the Twin Towers at Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles.[22][23]

In May 2017, Ripps premiered a small installation at the Venice Biennale titled Diventare Schiavo (Become A Slave) and featuring VR works, where the public was invited to virtually pack boxes.[24][25] One writer remarked: "Here, laborious task becomes spectacle, while critiquing the socio-economic hierarchies of such technology."[26]

In 2018, Ripps, in collaboration with photographer Maggie West, exhibited Pornhub Nation, a large interactive installation sponsored by Pornhub. The exhibition depicts a future history of the porn site's own government. It provided parodied solutions to the topics of climate change, military occupation, governmental surveillance, and space exploration.[27][28]