Cody Trepte: Everything Has Always Already Begun

Cody Trepte: Everything Has Always Already Begun (2009). Hand-drawn ink on paper, 23 x 17 inches each.

Los Angeles-based artist Cody Trepte works primarily in drawing, printmaking and photography. His work investigates the nature of paradox, using historical narratives, language and appropriated imagery. Over the course of the 30 visually rhythmic and elegant drawings that make up the series Everything Has Always Already Begun, Trepte examines the complex and malleable nature of language.

Born in Austin, Texas, Trepte received his B.F.A. from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and his M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts. His work has been exhibited at Eleven Rivington, New York; Thierry Goldberg, New York; Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Florence; Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles; Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles; Austin Museum of Art; Weatherspoon Art Museum; Kunstverein INGAN e.V., Berlin, and at the Hammer Museum during the city-wide Made in L.A. exhibition earlier this year.

Trepte’s work Photo Album (2007), a set of 75 unique, hand-made books, is part of the exhibition LAMENT: for altered, erased and lost histories at PLATFORM, Winnipeg until Oct. 20, 2012.

Images courtesy of the artist.