Ravi Zupa

Self-taught, multi-disciplinary artist Ravi Zupa has held jobs as an animator and elementary school art teacher; his work, which often includes recycled media like maps and letters, is precisely rendered and wildly inventive. Taking cues from German Renaissance portraiture and Japanese woodblock prints, Zupa’s figures can be awkwardly posed and depicted from a slightly off-kilter perspectives.

In one painting, a sort of update on the “artist in his studio” trope, a figure sits at a desk where a computer monitor takes the place of an easel—hanging dogs, peasants, and a sprouting human heart emerge from the workspace. Ravi Zupa has exhibited extensively in his hometown of Denver, as well as cities across the globe—from London to Copenhagen to Mexico City.