Danish artist Peter Ravn has done everything from album cover art to conceptual fashion to music videos. But since the turn of the millennium, he’s embraced oil painting, and in the past few years, there’s been a strong theme to his work. Most of Ravn’s paintings depict nondescript, middle-aged men in business suits in a series of surreal and emotionally intense situations — lying on the floor with their feet in the air, curled up in blankets, crawling on the floor, clinging to tables. In one piece, bits of a man’s body are beginning to disappear; in another, one deathly pale management type weeps into the hands of someone who looks almost exactly like him. These images cast society’s most powerful archetype in an unsettlingly vulnerable light, humanizing the anonymous “suits” we see every day. Click through for a gallery of our favorite Ravn paintings, and visit his website to see more.
Peter Ravn, Back, 2011, oil on canvas, 80 cm x 80 cm
[via Booooooom]
Peter Ravn, Couch, 2011, oil on canvas, 50 cm x 50 cm
Peter Ravn, Jump, 2011, oil on canvas, 80 cm x 80 cm
Peter Ravn, Leaving Buildings, 2010, oil on canvas, 80 cm x 80 cm
Peter Ravn, Suspension, 2010, oil on canvas, 80 cm x 80 cm
Peter Ravn, Part of Me Has Already Left, 2010, oil on canvas, 80 cm x 80 cm
Peter Ravn, I Am Not Indifferent, 2010, oil on canvas, 115 cm x 150 cm
Peter Ravn, Ruler, 2010, oil on canvas, 110 cm x 110 cm
Peter Ravn, Um, 2009, oil on canvas, 160 cm x 180 cm
Peter Ravn, Borderline, 2009, oil on canvas, 85 cm x 120 cm
Peter Ravn, Ohne, 2009, oil on canvas, 180 cm x 110 cm
Peter Ravn, The Shock of the Old, 2009, oil on canvas, 120 cm x 120 cm