Hespe Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by renowned American artist, Lawrence Gipe. A reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, October 3 from 5:30-7:30. The exhibition will continue through October 26, 2013.

Lawrence Gipe is an American Social Realist painter whose nostalgic images evoke a time of progression and uncertainty. His exploration of the aesthetic ideology of 20th century propaganda is an attempt to re-contextualize imagery that often doesn’t bear witness to the errors of history. Working from archival images from the early to mid 1900’s, his paintings breath life into the monochromatic subjects. The style is reminiscent of early Impressionism; layered and textured brush strokes give each piece a soft focused rendition of reality. Gipe’s atmospheric paintings not only comment on the social context from which they are borrowed, but romanticize the tumultuous times within the socio-political imagery. Gipe’s work demonstrates the complimentary relationship between art and the understanding of history.

Lawrence Gipe was born in Baltimore in 1962 and currently lives and works in Tucson, AZ. He has shown extensively throughout the US and abroad. His work has been featured in Art in America, ARTnews, ArtSlant, Harper’s, Artforum, The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair. His work is in the museum collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Kemper Art Museum, Norton Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Yale University Library, Boise Art Museum, Federal Reserve Board, and Rutgers University. Gipe has shown with Hespe Gallery since 2008.