Ryan Trecartin was born in 1981 in Webster, Texas, and raised in rural Ohio, where in high school he designed costumes and sets for theater productions. In 2004, he received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence. At RISD, Trecartin filmed his constructions for the first time, assembling friends and classmates into a supporting cast that unabashedly explored the 21st century’s obsession with the self and stylized personality through exaggerated dialogue and garish getups. After graduation, Trecartin and his rotating, ever-expanding The Experimental People Band settled in New Orleans, decorating and embellishing the house that would become the backdrop for Trecartin’s breakthrough 2004 work A Family Finds Entertainment. After the house and most of Trecartin’s physical artworks were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, he moved his practice through Los Angeles, Miami, and Philadelphia before settling back in Los Angeles. A Family Finds Entertainment introduced the art world to Trecartin’s overwhelming style, where visual effects equally interrupt and exaggerate the narrative at hand—a narrative at once disorienting and engaging. His characters explore their own personalities—as they perceive them, or as others do—commenting on the vagaries of contemporary culture, the art world, and the oversaturation of information brought on by ever-widening technological networks. Although Trecartin writes, directs, and edits the videos himself while performing a number of roles, he encourages improvisation and studies the natural interactions of daily consumer life for inspiration. His video presentations often feature sculptural environments exploding out from the video itself, filling rooms and creating a space in which viewers find themselves in the same surroundings as the video’s manic protagonists, as seen in Jamie’s Bedroom (2007), K-CoreaINC.K (section a) (2009), and in collaborations with Lizzie Fitch such as Site Visit (2014). In 2009, Trecartin was awarded a trifecta of prizes celebrating his accelerated ascent in the art world: the Calvin Klein Collection New Artist of the Year Award at the Guggenheim Museum’s first annual Art Awards; Wolgin Fine Arts Prize in the inaugural Jack Wolgin International Competition in the Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia; and Pew Fellowship in the Arts from Philadelphia’s Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. The artist has had solo shows at several institutions, including his solo debut at QED, Los Angeles (2006); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2008); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2008); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2009); and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014–15). Any Ever, organized by the Power Plant, Toronto, traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2010), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris; and MoMA PS1, New York (all 2011). Trecartin is based in Los Angeles.