Artist talk: Torben Ribe

Torben Ribe's new works, Indoor Paintings, cut and paste literal objects into the
language of abstraction. The status of these works is fluid but they are definitely
paintings. We can be sure of that. Enough of the language of painting is there to
reassure us of this. These works are not merely painted, though. They are
constructed, put together, taken apart, messed up, fixed. They are, at once,
abstraction and concrete realism.
 
Woodchip wallpaper - insisted on by landlords to cover dents and knocks in walls and
later painstakingly removed by aspirational property buyers - re-enters the home as
the surface of a seemingly abstract painting. Other unavoidable daily inanities
find a place in Ribe's work: among them, oatmeal and other cereal products, cords,
print advertisements, electronic weather stations. These are products so bland and
ubiquitous that they are routinely camouflaged in beige, made invisible, stripped
of aesthetic properties. Boring things shape-shift. Ironing boards recur throughout
the show in different guises - standing, leaning, as plinths, as a painting element,
a stand for a projector and, finally, as sculpture. The works read as relics
constructed from the everyday invisible. Torben Ribe's Indoor Paintings are not so
much vanitas, reminders not of death but the artificial extension of life, banality
rendered in perpetuity. Stilled lives.
 
David Risley, 2016