Armando Ramos: Something Absurd

June 16 – June 26, 2015

Something Absurd is the second exhibition in “The Art Makers” series. Underwritten by William Wosick of West Fargo, “The Art Makers” will allow artists to create new bodies of work based in a singular idea or theme. This might entail an exhibition, a film screening, performance, reading, or various renditions of a public participatory event. Grateful to Dr. Wosick for his support, the Museum has embarked upon two artist collaborations this year alone. Because few professional opportunities are available for artists from North Dakota and Northwest Minnesota, the program spotlights artists who reside and work in this region.

Ramos is a native Texan who completed his undergraduate studies at the Kansas City Art Institute and graduate studies at Montana State University. In the years following graduate school he lived and maintained a studio in San Francisco, CA. Today he is Professor of Art at Valley City State University where he also chairs the department. In 2012, Ramos was awarded an Individual Artist Grant from the North Dakota Council on the Arts.

According to the artist, “My art practice is intended as a playful counterpoint to the darker images and ideas that inundate us through mass culture. I use irony and humor to evoke a sense of parody in my work. As an artist I am interested in the manipulation of images from everyday life and popular culture and how this visual information can be redirected and give life to my creations.’

Through portraiture and caricature, I create comically irreverent images drawn from my jumbled youth. Pop culture, mass media, religious iconography, and quotidian observations are civilly canonized as high-relief sculptures, minimalist interventions, and absurd juxtapositions that question the largeness of these larger-than-life embodiments. In examining my own history, I deny the authenticity of the past memories and the invincibility of adulthood. Instead, I seek to create an existence of complicated iconography that gives odd relevance to sculptures and paintings.”

Installation Images