Tyson Reeder
New Paintings, Jan 9 – Feb 15, 2015

CANADA is pleased to present “New Paintings” a solo show by Tyson Reeder; his first exhibition with the gallery. Never out to twist arms, the paintings instead guide us to the delights of seeing strangeness in the everyday. Reeder sees painting as an act of discovery and an offering of generosity and boundless pleasure.

Mr. Reeder is a colorist of subtly and odd emotive power. The soft pastel shades and the just slightly unexpected color choices of his palette undercut perfunctory and direct drawing. The paintings feature the curve of a shoreline, the outline of a chopper, or the orderly shelves of a shoe store, turning his attention to his day to day. The “picture-ness” of the paintings is frequently offset by hallucinatory abstract shapes or collaged elements including sheets of watercolor paper or smushed cotton balls that seem to imply fissures in reality. The effect is simultaneously eerie and reassuring.

Mr. Reeder’s paintings find power from being on the fulcrum of abstraction and figuration similar to such painters as Pierre Bonnard, Florine Stettheimer and Bob Thompson. The nearly childlike exuberance of Reeder’s canvases belies a thoughtful approach to finding something new to express through prosaic interior or landscapes. For instance, Mr. Reeder seeing a sunset on the side of custom van and finding it as awe inspiring as the real thing.

CANADA is also particularly happy to begin representing Mr. Reeder due to his imaginatively subversive approach towards his art career. In addition to his deep commitment to his studio practice Reeder has, along with his brother Scott, founded Club Nutz a comedy club in Chicago, curated numerous exhibitions including “Drunk vs. Stoned” at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and is the visionary behind a series of meta-art fairs including the wildly (un)successful Milwaukee International held at a bowling alley and the now legendary Dark Fair Cologne in 2008.

Like any good straight man, it is often difficult to tell where Mr. Reeder sits in regard to what he is presenting in his work. Mr. Reeder has heroically served as a conscience and foil for an art world gone out of its mind, a place everyone loves to complain about but few are willing to change. His paintings, in a sense, do the same job. Mr. Reeder is putting something out that is open, funny and gutsy. A second city romantic, a stumblebum or a bullfighter with paint brushes: we are free to ask and choose. And CANADA is happy to be able to provide Tyson Reeder what a talented painter and stone cold straight man deserve: top billing and 60% of the cut.

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