Larry Rivers, the New York born American sculptor and painter (born 1923 in the Bronx, NYC, USA), who, by critics, was understood as a revolutionary deliberately opposing common and traditional movements for the thrill of challenging the status quo, has succeeded in making his subversive ideas become part of contemporary art. They might be categorized as being pop-artish or neo-classic. One might name or define his work whichever way one wants, but the immanent vitality that derives from Rivers´restlessness and spontaneity is apparent. He once said to Frank O'Hara, an American poet, at a random party: "After all, it is life we're interested in, not art." Later in his studio, with no intention of contradicting himself, he said, "After all, it is art we´re interested in, not life." According to Frank O´Hara "his main interest was obviously in the immediate situation."

Mel Ramos' provocative paintings and prints put him on the map as an important Pop artist. Over 30 years along with the heroes and heroines of popular comic series, nude, female bodies of male phantasies depicted with bold outline and bright colours dominate his artistic oeuvre. They are not beautiful by nature in the classical sense, they are more farcically and constructed in their stainlessness and glamour. He supports this staginess by pairing them with artefacts of American consumerism, which are courting with their own seductive idealization. These pin ups, whose type he took from calendar art, the girlie illustrations and the Playboy magazine, are recovered in a synthetic world, bedded on fruits, at posing with larger than life consumer goods, at the game with lifelike animals, viewed trough a keyhole and shown in the same attitude as the great nudes of the art history.

The glossy texture and flatness of the works, - which are part of the series entitled 'pulpproject'- are emphasised by Oliver Dorfer´s method of applying the paint from the rear across acrylic glass. The formats are mainly 2 x 2 metres in size and divided into 4 equal parts, which come together to form one image. Pulpproject blends diverse techniques of high and low, such as the combination of a screen-like appearance and acrylic carving. This is similar to the very ancient technique of wood-carving and, as an image, combines the tradition of hand-sketches with the trashy world of comic and pulp magazines. Think of Oliver Dorfer's work as existing between data, and dread. Painting, a mnemonically rich and historically durable medium, thrusts away the fear of erasure with irascible permanence. While it evokes numerous thoughts and reflections, it simultaneously endures as a physical catalogue of data. Dorfer's work occupies this realm, where a plethora of signs are co-opted, compiled, re-assembled, humanized, and left to exist.
Born in Linz, Austria, in 1963, Oliver Dorfer has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and Asia.

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