NEW YORK, NY.- Ryder Ripps' first solo exhibition, titled Ho, opened on January 24th at Postmasters Gallery in New York. The show features large scale oil paintings, portraits once removed, derived from the Instagram of model Adrianne Ho (300,000 followers).

Ripps (6,000 followers) transforms self-portraits Adrianne Ho posts online into expressive, highly distorted pictures. Ho's carefully staged, posed and styled photos are digitally processed, then painted. In creating striking, warped images Ripps strains techniques that are commonplace in the fashion industry to make models appear more "attractive" to the point of abstraction.

Abstract passages referencing the heroic gestures of the Action Painters are generated through fingers moving across the decidedly unheroic touchscreen- the new site of aggression and anxiety in the age of the "virtual male gaze", where the archetypal macho painter has been emasculated.

Through this play with medium and technique, new and old truths about modernity are exposed and exaggerated. We reflexively simulate reality online through constant self-awareness and mediation of our image. Self is malleable center; brands now arbitrate beauty; pop culture personas become brands, their authenticity manipulated by multiple filters and amplified by mass circulation. Ryder Ripps' portraits become a dissection of, and a subjugated homage to, his empowered subject as he updates the conversation about the place of painting in contemporary culture.

Ryder Ripps is a 28 year old conceptual artist living in New York City. He was recently profiled by the New York Times: Mr. Ripps...artist, programmer and creative director, is the consummate Internet cool kid, as fluent in HTML and JavaScript as in the language of conceptual art... - Adrian Chen, The New York Times