Roparville
Welcome to ‘Roparville’, where nothing is quite as it seems…
In this sexy, kaleidoscopic world, Dennis Ropar gets a kick out of juxtaposing
darker gothic images of bats, ghouls, pills and churches with storm clouds, with the kitsch gaiety of stylized flowers, birds, bambis and happy families. The main thread is the tag “unlucky” which evokes a sense of foreboding and unease.

Dennis Ropar’s latest exhibition of paintings has a ‘vintage chic’ appeal as well as a modern, aesthetic zaniness. ‘Roparville’ is a culmination of the discourses he has explored previously; issues such as US cultural dominance; mass production and consumption; object fetishism; gender politics; drug culture; sex as commodity; and even contemporary arts practice itself. Does Pop eat itself here? Dennis Ropar’s clever use of irony means that he not only gets away with it but avoids didacticism. He embraces iconography from the previous five decades in art and design, which he playfully amalgamates and recycles to bestow new meaning.

‘Roparville’ is a world of provocative pin-up girls, machismo women and world weary cowboys. These tough men and strong, alluring women inhabit a world where Sex=Power. There is tension between the natural world with its flagrant femaleness and the cowboy/male hero whose rugged masculine exterior seems a fragile defense against it. One cowboy has a glorious pink flower superimposed on his hand, reflectively smoking a cigarette with his gun in its holster; he looks dubiously at a fluffy bunny, mimicking him by smoking a carrot. Another cowboy takes action against his feminine surroundings, firing his pistol as he reaches for the security of a cigarette packet. A cancerous, triffid-like vine grows out of his hand, encircling him like a lasso, and with the “unlucky” symbol a constant reminder that many of the choices we make as adults are thus so. A young girl riding her bike alludes to a ‘lost innocence’ as the grown-up women in Ropar’s paintings seem corrupted by their feminine powers just as the male heroes are alternately emasculated by them. Ropar implies that there are no winners, only losers in this sex war; everyone is “unlucky”. In ‘Cinderella’, the young woman in the diver’s helmet at a type writer is poignant. She refuses to join in, choosing rather to submerge herself in the notion of idealized romantic love through the writing of a love letter. Although she too is unlucky in love with the object of her affection seemingly remote and her love unrequited. Thus, “Roparville” is a rich world of colourful imagery, humour and ideas that together excite, challenge and disturb us.

Finally, ‘Roparville’ by Dennis Ropar is a reflection on how ‘nostalgic’ images of the past, as well as ‘classic’ consumer objects, when re-contextualised, offer us, not only a new definition of the times we live in, but also a window to the future.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2007 Masterpiece at DXL, Hobart, “Product”
2007 Greenwood Gallery, Melbourne, “Disposable”
2006 Span Galleries, Melbourne, “Behind Closed Doors”
2006 Church Studios, Adelaide, ‘Behind Closed Doors”
2006 Fad Gallery, Melbourne, “Leatherbound Women”
2006 Pop Shop by Ropar, Melbourne, “Leatherbound Women”
2006 Pop Shop by Ropar, Melbourne, “100 Ropars No Reserve”
2006 Fad Gallery, Adelaide, “100 Ropars No Reserve”
2005 Pop Shop by Ropar, Melbourne, “Wonderland”
2005 Span Gallery, Melbourne, “America We Love You”
2005 Pop Shop by Ropar, Melbourne, “America We Love You”
2005 Wall Gallery, Melbourne, “What Is Ropar"
2004 Blackkab Gallery, Brisbane “What Is Ropar”
2004 Fad Gallery, Melbourne, “What Is Ropar”
2004 Telstra Building, Melbourne, “Icons”
2004 Richard Hosking, Adelaide, “Pin Ups”
2004 Affordable Art Fair, Melbourne
2004 Rex Livingstone Fine Arts, Sydney, “god save America 11”
2004 Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne, “-goes dotti”
2004 Dream, Melbourne, “Pink”
2003 Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Melbourne, "god save America 11”
2003 Elliot Salon, Melbourne, “My Funny Valentine”
2002 Rex Livingstone Fine Arts, Sydney, “Cowboys Again”
2002 Jackman Gallery, Melbourne, “Dennis Ropar & Darrell Hall”
2002 Span Galleries, Melbourne, “Product”
2002 Showgirls Bar 20, Melbourne, “Wet Dreams"
2001 Kula Lotrscak, Zagreb, “Melbourne Life”
2001 Mansour & Hill Gallery, Melbourne, “Hommage”
2001 Mansour & Hill Gallery, Melbourne, “Cowboys Do It Better”
2001 QDOS Gallery, Melbourne, “On The Road”
2000 Aardwolf Gallery, Melbourne, “Blimps In Cities”
2000 Aardwolf Gallery, Melbourne, “Paintings On Pailings”
2000 Aardwolf Gallery, Melbourne, “Works On Paper and Sculptures”
1999 Span Galleries, Melbourne, “A Cowboy, His Horse and a Hose”
1998 Span galleries, Melbourne, “Wanna Be A Cowboy”