Cody Trepte
Bio
Cody Trepte (b. 1983 Austin, Texas) embraces a seemingly impossible problem: to give shape to that which resists having form. Drawing upon the strategies of conceptual art and the histories of philosophy and science, Trepte makes prints and drawings and appropriates photographs to represent paradoxes, linguistic or pictorial ambiguities, and other absences, contradictions, and anomalies that defy direct explanation or concrete visual exposition. For the works on view here, which share the title Its Remaining Presence, he began with the device of the ellipsis: that which is unstated but understood. The works articulate the infinite encapsulated in a finite form. Each print contains a unique handmade ink marble pattern upon which the artist has silkscreened text (each statement an anagram of the title) in the same color as the paper, thereby complicating the legibility of these signs. Trepte proposes that it is through the friction of subtle displacement and interference that we might discover that familiar forms and accepted knowledge remain perpetually unfixed.
Gallery
Cody Trepte
Works by Cody Trepte. Installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, June 2-September 2, 2012. Photo by Brian Forrest.
Cody Trepte
Cody Trepte. Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again, 2009. Ink on paper. 20 x 17 in. (50.8 x 43.2 cm). Courtesy the artist. Photo by Michel Underwood.
Cody Trepte
Cody Trepte. Left: Heisenberg, 2009. Silk screen on paper. 28 x 21 in. (71.1 x 53.3 cm). Left: Heisenberg, 2010. Gelatin silver print. 23 x 17 in. (58.4 x 43.2 cm). Courtesy the artist. Photo by Michel Underwood.
Cody Trepte
Cody Trepte. Everything Has Always Already Begun, 2009. Ink on paper. 2 parts, 23 x 17 in. (58.4 x 43.2) each. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Michel Underwood.
Cody Trepte
Cody Trepte. Front: Studying a Real Machine, 2010. Back: Everything Has Always Already Begun, 2010. Toner on paper. 96 x 126 in. (243.8 x 320 cm) each. Installation view, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Michel Underwood.
Cody Trepte
Cody Trepte. All It Is, and Ever Was, and Ever Will Be, 2010. Graphite and diamond powder over silk screen on paper. 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm). Courtesy the artist. Photo by Michel Underwood.