Lyons Wier Gallery Project Space is proud to present a series of new original artwork and limited edition prints by award-winning illustrator John Ritter. Ritter's politically and emotionally charged works utilize the vernacular of the information age to create vibrant images of politics, celebrity, crime, and catastrophe. By exposing the inherent anxiety of today's world, these subversive works fashion unseen relationships and contexts through humor and clever juxtaposition. Ritter's works are simultaneously complex and accessible, offering new political as well as artistic possibilities. Ritter studies and sources potential subjects from found photographs then manufactures compositional elements by layering and combining his own original photography to make a fabricated context in which the subject matter exists. His work exists in its purest form, as a digital configuration, that has been appropriated, reconfigured and recycled into a form that is humanly expressive, provocative and consumable. Ritter's animated and concise illustrations of celebrities and popular culture have consistently graced the pages and covers of mainstream publications such as The New Yorker, Time, GQ, The New York Times and Harpers, to name a few. John Ritter received his BFA in Fine Arts from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and the San Francisco Art Institute. He founded John Ritter Illustration, a full-service illustration studio specializing in electronic and traditional media, producing original artwork for editorial publication, advertising and software interface design. Clients include Adobe Systems in Silicon Valley, where he was part of the design team that created and marketed Adobe Photoshop in the early 1990's. Ritter has exhibited at the Ansel Adams Center for Photography in San Francisco, the California College of Art and has participated in shows in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Los Angeles. His work will be featured in a group show of international artists in 2012 at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Ritter is the recipient of several awards from prominent entities such as American Illustration, Communication Arts, The New York Society of Illustrators and Gawker. 
| 
