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25/2/2015

Joe Reihsen

Praz-Delavallade @ Vedovi, Bruxelles

Praz-Delavallade is extremely happy to announce its inaugural show in Brussels, which is also its first exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Joe Reihsen. This exhibition will be the beginning of a regular series of exhibitions hosted by Vedovi Gallery, offering us and our artists an opportunity to engage with the Belgian public.

Joe Reihsen's paintings are characterized by optical illusions, vigorous and determined overlays of polymers that often exceed every possible limit of the surface. Over the years he has constructed a body of work that is both materially determined and metaphorically romantic, a body of work that bears the tension of a physical universe that is highly permeated with digital realities.

It's indeed artists who mix the human gesture with the machine, and whose obsessions are as much those of painting geeks as of traditional painters, like Christopher Wool and Albert Oehlen for instance, that are his major reference points. With its crisp flat finishes, and trompe l'oeil depictions of impasto and brushstrokes, Reihsen creates panels that are entrenched in the historical language of abstract painting, while also exerting a clear relationship to contemporary digital culture. Like the ubiquitous digital screen, all of Reihsen's panels contain a profound sense of physical depth while remaining almost entirely flat.

Reihsen belongs to a generation of painters that naturally integrated digital tools in their art while still in high school in the 1990s. And until today, he will use computer terms to describe his process, he will "copy and paste, distort, warp and rotate," only to end up "scaling up" or "scaling down." In the end though, it is artists like Eva Hesse and Clyfford Still—both geniuses of texture and surface, seemingly at odds with flat screens and pixels—who really gain his admiration. The twin elements of digital maven and manual laborer are what define Reihsen both as a person and as an artist. As put by Ed Schad, "the most urgent question of his painting is whether these two worlds ultimately have to be at odds or wether he can find a vocabulary that dissolves the split entirely." (Modern Painters, June 2014)

Joe Reihsen (b. 1979, Blaine, Minnesota) lives and works in Los Angeles. Joe received his BFA in Painting and New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 and a MFA in 2008 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was awarded the UC Regents Fellowship. Reihsen is represented by Praz-Delavallade in Paris and Brussels, Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles, and Brand New Gallery in Milan.

For all inquiries please contact Silvia Ammon: T +32 2 5133838 silvia@praz-delavallade.com
Flavie Loizon flavie@praz-delavallade.com

Opening: 26 February, 6–8pm

Praz-Delavallade @ Vedovi
11 Boulevard de Waterloo 1000 Brussels Belgium
Hours:
Tue - Sat / 10am - 6pm

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