Installation view: Scott Reeder, People Call Me Scott, 2013. Courtesy of the gallery.
Recently opened at Lisa Cooley Gallery, New York is Scott Reeder’s solo exhibition, “People Call Me Scott”, a presentation of paintings and sculpture. Language generates all of Reeder’s paintings and sculptures. He keeps voluminous lists of titles, methods, and copious ideas, which yield an expansive range of objects and approaches. The resulting work, which varies greatly, includes not only figurative paintings, like “Panda Protest” (2011), a painting of pandas holding blank black-and-white protest signs, but also minimal, geometric, abstractions like “Paper at Night” (2011), colorful rectangles on a black background. Reeder’s abundant lists also compile ideas of how works can be made, generating process-paintings like mop paintings, penny paintings, and pasta paintings. In all cases, however, words come first. These works also point to Reeder’s ongoing interest in the history of painting, while simultaneously subverting the gravitas of historical reference through understated playfulness.
Installation view: Scott Reeder, People Call Me Scott, 2013. Courtesy of the gallery.
Scott Reeder
Untitled (Pasta Painting)
2013
Oil and enamel on canvas
84 x 64 inches. Courtesy of the gallery.
In Reeder’s new exhibition, language, humor, and abstraction again take center stage. These qualities exist most essentially in his new pasta paintings, which use spaghetti to form both abstract and text paintings. His abstract works playfully undercut Pollock, replacing brushstrokes with scattered noodles, while his text paintings present combinations of four letter words –”Fake Rich, Post Cats, Idea Club” – which gently point towards the cannon of text-based work. In both cases, the carbohydrate-laden source of each mark reads slowly, and creates a sly joke. Reeder’s new text works also, for the first time, foreground his titles, which have always exerted a gravitational pull on his imagery.
“People Call Me Scott” is on view through December 22nd, 2013.
For more information on Scott Reeder’s solo exhibition, “People Call Me Scott” visit Lisa Cooley Gallery, New York.
