Richard Ankrom
An interventionist, Richard Ankrom reacts to his mundane surroundings, redefining found objects and environments. He is best known for his 2011 Guerilla Public Service where he manufactured and installed road signs on the busy 110 Freeway in Los Angeles to the same specifications used by California Transportation Authority. “The signs were [...] placed on the existing structure to aid motorists to their destination and ease traffic congestion for the hundreds of millions of motorists in their commute,” he said. Although a professional sign-maker by day, the artist did this act without permission and it surprisingly remained intact for eight years until Ankrom’s improvements were incorporated into replacement signs sanctioned by Caltrans.
His 2012 Figurines series intervenes on a more intimate scale, creating BDSM masks for household chotchkies. His contempt for effusive sentimental goods that pander to nostalgic consumers led Ankrom to take these objects and disable them. In this process mass produced figurines become individual and surreal. He selected the objects by their character, such as Captain Kirk and Winnie the Pooh. He cleaned, masked, dipped or poured them several times with synthetic rubber and tucked zippers in with dental tools and sealed with rubber. The artist cites Duchamp’s ready-mades, …
An interventionist, Richard Ankrom reacts to his mundane surroundings, redefining found objects and environments. He is best known for his 2011 Guerilla Public Service where he manufactured and installed road signs on the busy 110 Freeway in Los Angeles to the same specifications used by California Transportation Authority. “The signs were [...] placed on the existing structure to aid motorists to their destination and ease traffic congestion for the hundreds of millions of motorists in their commute,” he said. Although a professional sign-maker by day, the artist did this act without permission and it surprisingly remained intact for eight years until Ankrom’s improvements were incorporated into replacement signs sanctioned by Caltrans.
His 2012 Figurines series intervenes on a more intimate scale, creating BDSM masks for household chotchkies. His contempt for effusive sentimental goods that pander to nostalgic consumers led Ankrom to take these objects and disable them. In this process mass produced figurines become individual and surreal. He selected the objects by their character, such as Captain Kirk and Winnie the Pooh. He cleaned, masked, dipped or poured them several times with synthetic rubber and tucked zippers in with dental tools and sealed with rubber. The artist cites Duchamp’s ready-mades, Rauschenberg’s erased de Kooning, Paul McCarthy, and Jeff Koons as influences for his humorous subversions.
Richard Ankrom has had several gallery and museum exhibitions on Los Angeles, including at Robert Green Fine Arts and at Bert Green Fine Art.
