Fred Rinne (born 1955) is an American visual and performance artist. His cross disciplinary approach, outsider aesthetic and overriding cultural critique defines his work.
"As an American I feel that I have grown up bathed in pop schlock against my will. It was always the background noise of my culture... Instead of a real culture where songs actually mean something, we have this junk culture of entertainment working on the principle of planned obsolescence. We don't have to eat the same hamburgers, listen to the same music, or see the same images. I struggle for a world where every man can be his own Manilow."
Born in
Crescent City, California
Crescent City ( Tolowa: ''Taa-’at-dvn''; Yurok: ''Kohpey''; Wiyot: ''Daluwagh'') is the only incorporated city in Del Norte County, California, of which it is also the county seat. The city is on the North Coast of California and had a tota ...
, United States, Rinne grew up in California, settling in 1980 in San Francisco. He studied theater arts and art in Modesto, Sacramento, and San Francisco, ending up with a science degree in Environmental Studies from
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...
.
He began showing his paintings and sculptures in the 1980s, and has exhibited at
The LAB
The Lab (formerly Co-LAB) is a not-for-profit arts organization, performance space, and artist residency located in the Redstone Building in San Francisco's Mission District. Since 1984, The Lab has hosted performances and projects by artists i ...
, Show and Tell Gallery, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Z Gallerie, and the Endeavor House in London, England.
Rinne's graphics and articles have appeared in San Francisco Bay Area publications Frank, Processed World, Filth, Weekly Weird News, Flatter, and the Anderson Valley Advertiser, as well as Le Dernier Cri in Marseilles, France.
In 1985, Rinne co-founded the sound performance group National Disgrace, and later the Bringdownz. These groups performed at
Artists' Television Access
Artists' Television Access (ATA) is a 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit art gallery and screening venue in San Francisco's Mission District in the United States of America. ATA exhibits work by emerging, independent and experimental artists in ...
, the Great American Music Hall and other Bay Area venues.
Rinne began to produce artist books around 2000, including "Santa Christ," "Temp Worker," and "Ice Cream Bummer."
He has collaborated on books with Marshall Weber,
Scott Williams, and Dana Smith, and exhibited at the
San Francisco Center for the Book
The San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB) is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Mary Austin and Kathleen Burch in San Francisco, California in the United States. The first center of its kind on the West Coast, SFCB was modeled after ...
, Booklyn Book Arts Salon, and other venues. His original, hand-painted books are owned by the Pompidou Center, Paris, France, Bibliothèque Nationale du Luxemburg, Kunstbibliotek, Berlin, Germany, as well as many universities and other collections in the United States.
References
Sources
*Rowell, Mike, "Bring on the Noise", ''SF Weekly'', 1993.
*Glass, Seymour, "National Disgrace" interview, ''Banafish Magazine'', 1987
External links
BooklynFred Rinne on Flicker
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rinne, Fred
1955 births
Living people
Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area
Artists from California
Culture of San Francisco
Mission District, San Francisco
American contemporary painters
American people of Finnish descent
San Francisco State University alumni