Joe Rudko

Untitled Colors
​Red Scrap, 2021. Found photographs on paper. 15 x 11.25 inches ©Joe Rudko
​Joe Rudko’s solo exhibition, 'Untitled Colors' at Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles, brings together 10 large single-colour photographs. The exhibition comprises a large body of work formed by personal snapshots, family photos and anonymous internet finds, skilfully deconstructed and reshaped into large photo montages. 

This Gold Circle showcase includes an interview with American artist Joe Rudko, who shares insights into the way he creates, what influences his artistic decisions, and the creative process behind his craft. 
​Flower Scrap, 2021. Found photographs on paper. 15 x 11.25 inches ©Joe Rudko

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your career as an artist began?

​I live in Seattle, where I’ve grown up and spent most of my life. I live in a quiet corner of Capitol Hill, and bike to my studio a couple miles away in SODO. 

As a teenager, I painted from National Geographic, which inspired me to get my own camera and take my own pictures. I went on to study photography at Western Washington University, where I worked taking portraits, photographing city council meetings, concerts, and occasional weddings. I was also wandering around my neighborhood and doing some light trespassing to take photographs of interesting arrangements of garbage. I made drawing experiments with antique photographs that I bought from a local antique store. I enjoyed the tactility of the collage, and found comfort in the methodical repetition of drawing lines. These were the first of the Object Drawings, which I showed in 2013 in Seattle at an apartment gallery called Vignettes. People responded well to the work, and that show domino-ed into another, and another, and another.  
​Blue Scrap, 2021. Found photographs on paper. 15 x 11.25 inches ©Joe Rudko

What are the primary influences in your work?
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​As a middle-younger child, I often found myself in the “peacemaker” role. I think there’s a relationship between being a peacemaker and wanting to work between different mediums. David Hockney has always been an important artist to me. He’s someone who experiments across mediums and continues to make boundary-pushing work even now in his 80’s. His curiosity and openness is truly special. 

As a kid who grew up in the 90’s, I had digital photography and email, but I also learned how to write in cursive and hand-made birthday cards. A lot of my work is balanced between those analog and digital languages. I like how those worlds meet; for instance, how scrolling on my iPhone while it feels quite modern, comes from the formatting of ancient scrolls. 
​Yellow, 2021. Found photographs on paper. 50.5 x 38.12 inches ©Joe Rudko
​Violet, 2021. Found photographs on paper. 50.25 x 38.25 inches ©Joe Rudko

Untitled Colors is based on 10 large single-colour photographic works. Can you describe the creative process for making the works?
​

​I’ve been working with found photography for the last decade, and part of the fun is in finding ways to understand photographs that I know little or nothing about. Organising photographs by colour was a way I could bring a range of different imagery together, without imposing a discrete narrative on the pictures. I was thinking a lot about colour field paintings, and how open to interpretation they are. I wanted to try and do something similar but with a photograph, something more inherently representative and closed off. 

Early into making the work I knew I wanted to make a suite of colours across the spectrum. So, it was a process of sorting through thousands of found photographs and isolate particular colours. I cut each photograph into half-inch tessellations and then fit them together on the paper like a mosaic or a series of pixels. 
​Red, 2021. Found photographs on paper. 50.25 x 38.12 inches ©Joe Rudko
​Green, 2021. Found photographs on paper. 50.25 x 38.25 inches ©Joe Rudko

​The photographic material that you gather for the creation of these photomontages is of different origin. Are there other factors affecting what is selected, such as age or other properties? 

For this series of work, it was important to use materials from as many different sources and time periods as possible. Some of the sources were given to me by family, some from friends who work with collage, some were purchased from antique stores or ebay, and some are my own photographs which I took as a teenager. I wanted a broad and inclusive array of materials.
​Blue, 2021. Found photographs on paper. 50.25 x 38.12 inches ©Joe Rudko

​What is the importance of colour in your work? 
​

​Colour is a tool that helps organise my pictures. It helps point to the interconnectedness of small personal experiences that are captured in a photograph. I like that a snapshot of yellow flowers from 2003 can sit comfortably next to a black and white portrait, yellowed with age from 1898. The memories, experiences, and opinions held about particular colours can be an invitation to look. 

​Colour symbolism may vary from culture to culture, carrying conflicting meaning and associations. Would you say that your chosen colour palette is a universal one? 
​

​I definitely want it to be an inclusive experience. The pallet comes from a variety of print processes, paper types, across time and continents, and the works are dense and full of personal details. 
​Magenta Object, 2021. Found photographs on panel. 
14 x 11 x 1.5 inches ©Joe Rudko
​B/W Object, 2021. Found photographs on panel. 
​14 x 11 x 1.5 inches ©Joe Rudko

​What was the most challenging aspect of creating these intricate photomontages?
​

It takes lots of time to find, cut, organise, and glue. Trusting in the long process is something that I can wrestle with. I knew early on that I wanted to make a suite of several colours across the spectrum, but it took completing 5 or 6 before I saw them working together.

How do you see this body of work evolving? Do you have plans to develop it further?
​

​For a few pieces, B/W Object and Magenta Object, I worked on small wood panels with the collage wrapping around the edges. It’s a way to embrace the objectness of the photographs and merge into traditional painting-on-panel territory. Those two pieces felt particularly new and exciting, so I’ve started to work on some larger wood panels. 
Untitled Colours by Joe Rudko - Exhibition view at Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles 
​All images ©Joe Rudko
With thanks to Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles 

Joe Rudko

Von Lintel Gallery
Joe Rudko is a graduate of Western Washington University and has shown broadly in both solo and group exhibitions throughout the Northwest including exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum. He has been the recipient of the Future List Award and two Art Walk Awards from City Arts Magazine as well as the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship Award and the Facebook Artist in Residence program. His work is featured on the cover of indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie’s album Kintsugi and is included in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum, F5, Fidelity Investments, and the City of Seattle. His work has been published in Artforum, Art in America, New American Paintings, Humble Art Foundation, Fukt Magazine for Contemporary Drawing, The Stranger, and The Seattle Times. Rudko lives and works in Seattle, WA.

​www.joerudko.com


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​Founded by Tarrah von Lintel more than 20 years ago, Von Lintel Gallery has continually developed its discerning curatorial point of view. The gallery predominantly features painting, photography and unique works on paper that are forward thinking and challenging while maintaining a strong sense of aesthetic tradition. Focusing on a selective roster of artists who quietly push the boundaries of medium and materiality, the gallery exhibits art that will continue to engage the viewer over time.

Tarrah von Lintel began her career in Paris, working first with Galerie Claire Burrus and then Thaddeus Ropac before opening her own gallery in Munich in 1993. Her gallery featured many NY artists, some of whom she continues to represent today, leading to her move to NYC’s growing Chelsea district in 1999. After 15 successful years in NY, the gallery relocated to a much larger space in the burgeoning Culver City arts community, in recognition of LA’s growing importance on the international art scene.

Von Lintel artists have shown or placed work in important public collections, among them The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; the International Center of Photography; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the High Museum; The Getty; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; and Londonʼs National Gallery of Art.

www.vonlintel.com