Who is Ryder Ripps, Artist Trying To Take Down Bored Ape Yacht Club ARTnews.com – ARTnews

When Bored Ape Yacht Club launched at the height of last years NFT frenzy, Ryder Ripps shrugged off the collections off-putting imagery. The series of 10,000 cartoon apes were rife with the meme aesthetics of the internets darkest corners, but if you spend enough time online, its something you tend to just look past. Then a few months later, a friend showed him the collections logo beside the Totenkopf, a skull-and-cross bones insignia widely used in Nazi Germany. It dawned on him: The Apes, now viral and promoted widely by crypto-hawking celebrities, might be an elaborate, malicious troll.

I realized this shit was intentional, Ripps, a 36-year-old conceptual artist and creative director who has worked with major artists like Kanye West and Grimes and brands like Nike, Red Bull, and Gucci, told ARTnews. Theyre ruining the internet.

Since December, Ripps has led a crusade against the irreverent collection, its parent company Yuga Labs currently valued at a whopping $4 billion and founders Greg Solano, Wiley Aronow, Kerem Atalay, and Zeshan Ali.

Ripps contends that BAYC, from its logo to the Apes accessories like sushi chef headbands inscribed with kamikaze in Japanese kanji and spiked Prussian Pickelhaube helmets is threaded with racist imagery and ties to the online alt-right. Ripps and Yuga Labs are currently embroiled in a legal battle after the company sued the artist for creating copycat NFTs that Ripps says are meant to satirize the collection. (Yuga Labs and BAYC have previously denied the allegations of racism.)

Ripps has cast himself as Laocoon the priest who begged the Trojans not to let the Greek horse into the city warning that Yugas founders are trying to slip toxic imagery and ideas into the larger culture by packaging it as just another absurd, but ultimately innocuous NFT collection. But is he the best messenger for his warning?

When asked why hes so sure that Solano, Aronow and their counterparts are trolls, Ripps laughed. Takes one to know one, he said.

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Who is Ryder Ripps, Artist Trying To Take Down Bored Ape Yacht Club ARTnews.com - ARTnews