Ellwood T. Risk: Trigger Warning

Trigger Warning marks Ellwood T. Risk’s return to the Los Angeles gallery scene after an eight-year hiatus. The collection of works from 2016 through the early part of this year invites us to contemplate our relationship to the America we find ourselves living in today.

Often, the artist’s creative output involves the shooting of targets. Risk has said that he finds the silhouettes to be “immediately recognizable and utterly compelling.” He began working with targets in 2002 and has continued to find inspiration in their use as a recurring theme in his art.

“We are, all of us, targets. Beset on all sides by political, religious, social, and corporate institutions that seek to impose their will upon us from cradle to grave. No human living in the ‘developed’ world is exempt from the influence of these fixed cultural elements, forever  locked in competition as they seek dominion over our lives, our pocketbooks, and our souls.” - Ellwood T. Risk

Art Critic Peter Frank wrote in 2007: “Ellwood T. Risk is making a statement but it’s a statement he wants us to feel even sooner than he wants us to know. The impact of the bullet must be sensed. Our skin must become the surface of the works. Those figures must not simply lure us, but must be us.”