Josh Reames

Josh Reames new body of work, #PAINTING, considers abstraction and painting in relation to the internet, and is informed by the strange, new space where a majority of viewership takes place online through blogs and websites. In these new paintings, depth, dimension, and the artist's hand are typically lost in translation from object to image, allowing the information to exist as it might appear on a digital screen.

Reames’ conceptual framework functions as a kind of filtration device for cultural byproduct and its attending relativism, literally flattening disparate images and references and thereby removing their hierarchy. In this evanescence, a compendium of signs, text and symbols (emoji, letters, text, and numbers—doubling as marks, sprayed or squeezed), objects (cigarettes, fried eggs, bombs, tennis balls), and cultural icons (Gumby, female breasts) are all flattened to the same-level composition.

Reames’ stream of metadata abstraction could be translated in this way:

#relativity #IRL #ubiquity #girl #animation #zztop #cruisin #sports #abstraction #URL #emoji #warhol #instagood #iphonesia #L.A. #simpsons #breakfast #figurepainting #XXX #chat #bones #paper #me#picoftheday #gardening #vacation #gumby #dialogue #blogspot #wildwest #academia #millenial #agentorange #tropix #billclinton #yellow #tbt #shopping #psychedelics #sextme #composition #aliens #mine #bigbiz #okay #overexposure #nudes #startrek #summer #deef #joerogan #vegas #escapism #midnight #punksnotdead #idealist #A.I. #snowflake

In fact, Reames’ paintings are made to confuse this space. He wants the content and information in his paintings to be understood the same way one would understand a Google image search—a field in which images and forms are constantly shifting and any authoritative meaning is nearly impossible to pin down. This approach constitutes a way of viewing reality that is synonymous with our contemporary experience of spending nearly 24 hours per week (the current average for American adults) blog-surfing or scrolling through the web

#PAINTING

February 22 - March 29, 2014

Press Release