Ruppert’s quaint amalgams of the gothic, the erotic, and the extra-human are right up the hills of the uncanny valley. Leather-clad torsos sport marbled bearings. Winged monsters with penis-like tentacles drown in champagne sepia. These scenes are as enticing as they are deadly and their fan-fiction familiarity is as disturbing as their number.
This is the fodder of DeviantArt and the last year’s AI engines. But Ruppert’s charming macabres hail from the 1970s and speak of an apocalypse the artist could have only imagined. This little exhibition thus hedges retro with curio, ultimately withholding the key to this life’s dark obsessions.
