Tyson Reeder

Tyson Reeder (b. 1974, Fairfax, VA) paintings with a light touch. Errant pencil lines form loose boundaries for thinned out flows of acrylic paint that seem soaked into the canvas or possibly emerging from within somehow.

From time to time, Reeder will press down on a particular detail paying close attention to something weird, like an embroidered dragon on a silk jacket or the veins on a leaf. The focus heightens oddness, like a pulled-out thread in the fabric of his painted reality. Reeder demurs when confronted with the possibility of allegorical meanings in his work and refers, instead, to the shape-making possibilities a leaf or an escalator offers his compositions. But we are free to interpret the paintings and, given our times, they inspire reveries on post-apocalyptic society or, less operatically, some particular long weekend when everyone went away. The sensation of missing out on the main event permeates the works, and the sense of loss is replaced with the sensation of finding something private and the bewildered joy of experiencing strangeness in the everyday.

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