Scott Reeder

Since the mid-1990s, Scott Reeder has been behind some of America's most compelling and quizzical art projects and installations, subversively using humor to provoke our own study of expectation. In his painting, Reeder employs a litany of comedic devices, from absurdities and non-sequiturs to hyperbolic parodies, in order put forth good-spirited lampoons of historical genres and styles as well as the art historical process as a whole. For example, Reeder has honed an approach to painting with noodles. Museological in scale and executed with precise skill, the paintings recall the history of monochromatic works as they are seen in multiple modern art movements from Russian Constructivism to Minimalism to the french BMPT painting group. Known as his Pasta Paintings, the works are a saccharine, but serious critique of the essentialist approach to understanding the nature of painting as a medium in 20th century art. Expanding on his critique of the history and stylistic traditions of art-making, Reeder’s sculptures also carry his idiosyncratic humor and wit. As in his paintings, the sculptural work explores ideas of both the presence and absence of the artist's hand, whether it be as simple a gesture, fold, crease or his personal handwriting manifested in neon. His work emphasizes how Reeder values the role of mark making and expression in art while making a good-natured joke of the weight often given to seminal Conceptual Art.

Reeder has had solo exhibitions at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Retrospective in Hudson, 356 Mission in Los Angeles, Kavi Gupta in Chicago and Berlin, and Lisa Cooley in New York. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Saatchi Gallery, and Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art, among other venues.

Courtesy of Kavi Gupta Gallery