Ran Ortner is a California-born artist who grew up in Alaska. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Ortner is known for his paintings of foaming waves and turbulent movement of opalescent sea water. These motifs evoke the expansive feeling of the reverberating insistence of life and visceral memories Ortner has accumulated through decades of surfing.

In 2009, Ortner won the inaugural ArtPrize competition. Two years later, his Deep Water No. 1 was selected as the visual centerpiece of New York’s famed Le Bernardin. In 2013, the Dutch government commissioned Element No. 5 as the visual centerpiece for the United Nations’ World Water Day at the World Forum in The Hague. In 2015, two of Ortner’s large paintings were displayed at 7 World Trade Center, at the invitation of Larry and Klara Silverstein. Element No. 1 was subsequently acquired and is permanently installed in the building’s lobby. His first major solo exhibition was at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York, from January 14 to Febuary 20, 2016.