Alan Reid was born in 1976 in Texas and currently lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Mary Mary, Glasgow; Patricia Low Contemporary, Gstaad; Lisa Cooley, New York; A Palazzo, Brescia.
More info at www.lisa-cooley.com
Alan Reid's Picks
6/11 - 7/26/2014
Best in show is a large, pine needle and fog oddity called Metropolitan High, a painting that manages to keep up with its grand, temporal theme -- does the title refer to high school or getting stoned, both? Gnarled conifer limbs reach towards each other partially obscured by fog and partially obscuring the polyhedron ziggurat beacon plopped on the MET. The painting is equally historical and backyard. There’s a keen poetic
(occasionally dopey) spirit at the center of Heidkamp’s unselfconscious, muddy-boots-over-carpet painting hand, locating the experience closer to Buddhist painting than to David Hockney, whose paintings these works are stylistically reminiscent of. Buddhist painting: easily overlooked metaphor packed into the mundane, a squirrel fussing over it’s tail, crickets intently eating, low hanging clouds. No pretention.
"Sanya Kantarovsky: Allergies"
5/9 - 6/21/2014
I’ve been occupied with pinning down images, so what a relief to see paintings casually held together! Boundaries dissolve here. Compositionally, there’s a lot of picture-in-picture activity, which is part of our zeitgeist, Jasper Johns to Will Benedict. My favorite work is an image of a woman in a doorway (can nearly hear Nouvelle Vague’s version of Too Drunk to Fuck) at her waist a nonplussed, gawking clown with an erect rosy nose seeming to both define their relationship and to potentiate her animus energy in the form of a floating phallus. Kantarovsky’s has allowed plenty of room for just this sort of suggestive, prosaic, interpersonal romance. Next, is Kitaj still unfashionable?
"Emily Mae Smith: Novelty Court"
Modernism: between drawing and painting. Pick the thread up between painting and graphic design. These charming paintings seem turned-out to equally evoke Tanaka Ikko and Monty Python. My favorite, a mustachioed (think Poirot) toothy graphic block with a monocle. There’s an ass where the tonsils should be – is this a preemptory meta-critique of the fool’s play of articulation? Un-critique-able. Damnable state. Where’s Freud? With the care of a confectioner, Smith has stepped out of the shadow of modernity (found pleasure in buffoonery and frivolity) and then stepped back in, reoriented toward posters. Ghosts nurture the craft of painting.
