Ben Reeves: OIL AND WATER
November 21, 2009 — December 19, 2009
 |  |  |
 |  | |
November 21 to December 19, 2009
Opening reception Saturday November 21, 3 to 6 pm. Artist in attendance
Ben Reeves’ second solo exhibition at the gallery features a suite of paintings
that ostensibly depict rainy day scenes – colourful umbrellas flash against grey skies interrupted by viscous raindrops. In earlier series Reeves made the breath visible, obscuring the faces of smokers with clouds of smoke. In other images Reeves transformed the banal world with hallucinogenic pink blossoms or fluffy snowflakes floating over the surface of parking lots and street scenes. Throughout his work such ephemeral phenomena give rise to heavy brushstrokes and daubs of paint that accentuate the tangible, object-ness of paint. In this manner Reeves asserts that the image is no more than a representation, a vocabulary of brushstrokes that makes a picture. In the artist’ words, “My work charts spaces between abstraction, representation, and ‘reality’.”
Ben Reeves studied Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia and received his Masters in Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. He currently lives in Vancouver where he teaches at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Reeves’ work was featured in solo exhibitions at Museum London in 2006 and Oakville Galleries in 2005. His work has also been seen in numerous group exhibitions, including Shifting Space, Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongquing, China (2005); Lines Painted in Early Spring, Galerie de L’UQAM, Montreal (and touring, 2004); and For the Record: Drawing Contemporary Life, Vancouver Art Gallery (2003). Recently his work was seen in Take You Time at the Simon Fraser Art Gallery, Burnaby (2009)
Reeves’ works are in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Museum London as well as in several private collections.
Artists:
Ben Reeves