Independent: My Fellow Americans
May 8 - 11, 2025









For Independent 2025, The Meeting is pleased to present Tod Lippy’s
My Fellow Americans, a single work comprising a series of small
portraits of Trump voters. Lippy’s title quotes President Nixon’s
famous introduction to his address to the “silent majority,” promoting
his pro-war policy in Vietnam in the face of a nation that had been
torn asunder.
Lippy says: “I googled the phrase ‘Why I voted for Trump’ and
over the course of several days found 50 people who had publicly
proclaimed their support, either in interviews with media outlets or
in op-eds they had written for national and regional newspapers. I
decided that I would paint portraits of each of these voters.”
Lippy mixes the conceptual with the documentary—he uses the
chance and randomness of Google searches to develop a snapshot of
the Trump constituency. His inquiry peers across the political divide:
he enters the other’s political bubble, putting a face to those in the
movement he opposes. Infusing himself into the closed circuits of
self-actualization that LinkedIn and Facebook sustain, he figures an
alternate universe that’s more than familiar.
My Fellow Americans saw Lippy pick up brush and paint for the first
time with the skillful results of a bold enthusiast. Each face beams
with the truth—albeit an unverifiable one—that portrait painting
bestows upon its subject.\
He channels Alex Katz’s flatness and attenuation of affect, giving his
subjects, despite their diverse looks, a visual if not psychic repetition.
One that echoes what cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer saw in 1920s
American popular culture: the surface display of a “mass ornament.”
Yet Lippy’s project holds ambiguity close to its heart. Is the artist—in
gouache, wax crayon, colored pencil, graphite, Sharpie, and paint
pen on board—humanizing his subjects, the political force they form,
and, ultimately, the man they placed at the country’s helm? Or is he
indicting them, calling out their misplaced sense of duty? Giving them
a relatable banality that Hannah Arendt may have called a pragmatic
amorality? — John Thomson
Tod Lippy (b. 1963, Baltimore) works across a range of disciplines,
including curation, design, music, publishing, and writing, to reckon
with the complexities of a fractured culture. He holds an MA in Art
History from Williams College and an MA in Cinema Studies from
New York University. Solo exhibitions include My Fellow Americans,
The Meeting pop-up, Los Angeles, CA (2025); Private, The Meeting,
New York, NY (2024); and Private, The Future Perfect, Los Angeles,
CA (2024). Lippy is the creator of the arts publication Esopus (2003–
2018), which has been the subject of exhibitions at the Colby College
Museum of Art in Waterville, ME (2024); the Nasher Sculpture
Center, Dallas, TX (2017); and de Appel Art Center, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands (2016). Lippy was awarded a MacDowell Colony
Fellowship in 2018. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.