Daniel Ribar is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Detroit, Michigan.
Ribar’s work questions how we see and interact with the world around us, drawn to utilitarian objects and everyday environments—particularly those shaped by his Midwestern upbringing. He looks beyond assumed functions to reveal what might otherwise remain invisible, collapsing the distance between life and the studio. The work often sits somewhere between abstraction and documentation of lived experience, ultimately his visual description of it, approached with a clinical investigation into form, material, and context.
Through collecting, indexing, and re-creating objects across photography, sculpture, and painting, Ribar explores questions of authorship, ownership, and value, blurring the line between made and found. His work leaves viewers questioning where the artist’s hand begins, ends, or is even recognizable.
Ribar holds a BFA from the College for Creative Studies and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.
He has served as a returning guest lecturer at institutions such as the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the College for Creative Studies, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and Wayne State University.
His work is included in the permanent collection of the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Bloomberg Business, i-D, C41 Magazine, IGNANT, Fisheye Paris, and more.
Education
MFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI, 2023-2025
BFA, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI, 2006-2010
Email - Danielribarphoto@gmail.com
734.968.5288
My recent work stems from an interest in the unreliability of memory. I employ a clinical approach, collecting and indexing moments and objects from my adolescence in suburban metro Detroit as a way of accepting and understanding my formative years.
With a nod to the visual language of didactic displays, I explore what happens when familiar, often overlooked objects from my youth are given similar analysis—arranged in structured formats that prompt reflection on how meaning is constructed, forgotten, or reinterpreted.
Alongside this indexing, I’ve been reengaging with the materials of my youth by exploring forms of mark-making rooted in my upbringing. I’m drawn to the kinds of things that were once meant to be hidden or overlooked—dented drywall behind bedroom posters, firework burns on the side of the garage, and tape that takes the paint with it.
By intentionally recreating marks that were byproducts of a careless youth, I let past imperfections guide my present work. These familiar, domestic traces act as a precursor to form, blurring the line between accident and intention, memory and construction.
Through these “household” or “known” marks and objects, I aim to collapse the distance between viewer and work, inviting a quiet recognition of the ordinary and the hidden symmetry within everyday life.