Irv Tepper A Career Survey: 1969- Present
March 16 - April 9, 2003
Irv Tepper: A Career Survey reveals the depth of range of two and three dimensional imagery this artist has explored over the past twenty five years.
Beginning with his early food sculptures of the late 1960's, Tepper's initial connection with, then advanced from the "Bay Area Funk Movement." This is a show of objects about obsessions.
Coffee cups in particular join us with thoughts amd memories associated with the consumption of the warm, caffeinated drink, and the elevated sense of awareness that it triggers. Translucent tears, pocks and charred remains interact with otherwise enlarged representational forms of cups, food or other essential objects.
Tepper was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1947, and received his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri in 1969. He received his M.F.A. in 1971 from the University of Washington, Seattle, and worked out of the Bay Area in California until the 1980s, when he moved to New York City. His work is held in numerous public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, NC; and the Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.