(American 1971 – )

Finding beauty in the banality of every day urban existence, Timothy Ernst explores the sensational and attractive reflections of facile city life. Ernst’s multiple medium practice draws its influence equally from the “anti-art” artists born the decade previous to him, such as Jack Pierson, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, and from the early pioneers of West Coast Minimalism such as James Turrell, Robert Irwin and Craig Kauffman. In his paintings, Timothy Ernst prefers to create the illusion of light instead of light illusions. He embraces the “low brow” tools and street ideology of punk rock, graffiti art, and of Southern California’s Kustom Car Culture and utilizes, reduction, subtle humor, the decorative, and the artificial to accomplish a new visual language. The signage sculptures are an extension of his discovery into contemporary human experience. Reconfiguring letters taken from found signs, Ernst creates simple words, giving intimate meaning to the commercial text. His work mines our chaotic and unnatural world addressing the obvious and creating meditative moments out of the space in between.