JOE REIHSEN
MICROCLIMATES
September 5th–October 14th, 2023
OPENING:
Tuesday, September 5th from 6–8pm
86 Walker St, Tribeca
The Hole is proud to announce Microclimates our third solo exhibition of paintings by Joe Reihsen (b. 1979). The following essay by writer Janelle Zara exposes the energy and logic behind this bold and nuanced new series.
In his ongoing exploration of abstraction as a reflection of nature, Reihsen embraces the inherent and material properties of paint. Where it moves on its own accord, the painter follows.
In these new works, washes of water-based pigments embed the physical properties of nature into the surface of the canvas, splashing and pooling according to the forces of gravity and the tension between liquid and fiber. The artist’s process then becomes one of world-building, where the sheer deposits of color form a topography of islands, fault lines and other abstracted landmasses. Imagine California on a map; its shape is defined by both the straight lines of manmade borders and the organic boundaries of coastline and river. Similarly his task in navigating the canvas’s terrain is both yielding to its existing contours and imparting his own painterly intervention.
Reihsen applies a second layer of paint to the pigment-stained canvas that is in many ways an inversion of the first; it’s oil where the other is water; opaque where the other is sheer; bright where the other is muted; applied by brush rather than by chance. The mark-making however is as much in dialogue as it is an inversion, striking a balance of opposing wills. Horizontal brushstrokes impose order on the land, using the weft of the canvas as an organizing principle, then where the brush meets the land’s chaotic edges, the order frays, deferring instead to the will of the coastline.
The work nods to both the gestural fluidity of Helen Frankenthaler’s soak stains and Etel Adnan’s jubilant distillation of the landscape into blocks of color. Note that although this is a new process within the artist’s practice, it embodies signature features of previous bodies of work. These include dramatized sensations of distance and depth and where areas of paint appear to recede beyond the physical plane of the canvas.
Note also that these hand-painted elements meet at soft but deliberate edges, cut organically by the artist’s handling of the brush rather than the sharp edges of masking tape. These edges are the meeting of friendly territories rather than hostile borders. Compositions within compositions. Microclimates. Regional dialogues.
– Janelle Zara
Joe Reihsen (b. 1979, Minnesota),
holds an MFA from UC Santa Barbara and lives and works in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions at Praz-Delavallade in Paris, LA and Brussels; Brand New Gallery in Milan; Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles; group shows at Arsenal in Montreal, with Lawrence Van Hagen in London and here at The Hole; art fairs around the world; all have established Reihsen as an important new voice in abstract painting.
