Erik ReeL exhibitions

Selected Shows

Markings III: Signs of a Lost Civilization, Vita Art Center, Bell Arts Factory, Ventura, USA

Markings I, and II. Two solo shows. B Street Guerilla Gallery, Oxnard, California, USA

Signs of a Lost Civilisation, solo, Laurel Ventura gallery, Ventura, California, USA

Print Electronico, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Epocha Nueva, Casa del Mexicano, Santa Paula, California, USA

Viva la Vida, Laurel Ventura Gallery, solo show, Ventura, USA

Turbulence, Gallerie255, Ventura, USA

71st SAGA Annual Print Exhibition, Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), New York City. USA

24th National ArtLink Print Exhibition, ArtLink Contemporary Art Center, Fort Wayne Indiana, USA

17th Parkside National Print Exposition, University of Wisconsin, USA

Faces of Woman, Las Vegas Center for Art and Design, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Landscape Unlimited, Chicago, USA

7th Annual Montpelier National, Montpelier, Virginia, USA

17th Annual National, McNeese State Universtiy; curated: Matthew Druit, Senior Curatorm, Menil Collection, Houston, USA

Signal + Noise, scrim for composer Patrick Lindley, Center for Research in Electronic Art TEchnology (CREATE), Media Arts and Technology (MAT) lab, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Caruso Woods Gallery, 4 Solo shows, Santa Barbara, California, USA

University of California at Santa Barbara, Faculty Club, 3 Solo shows, Santa Barbara, USA

Delphine Gallery, 5 Solo shows, Santa Barbara, California, USA

Lisa Kurts, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Artists For World Peace, Karpeles Museum, Santa Barbara, California; Kobe, Japan

Henry Art Gallery Museum, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

East / West Dialogue, curated Gene Barto, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA

Night Voices, sound collage with Sue Ann Harkey, Seattle Art Museum, USA

Kodak International, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., USA

Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Center on Contemporary Art (COCA), traveling exhibition, USA

City of Seattle Collects, curated Howard Fox, Seattle Art Museum, USA

Figure / Narrative, solo, Whatcom County Museum, Bellingham, Washington, USA

Solo, Cornish Institute for the Arts, Seattle, USA

Solo, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, USA

2 Solo shows, 123 Jackson Street Gallery, Seattle, USA

Faces of the Dead, solo, Evergreen State University, Olympia, Washington, USA

Dale Chihuly et al., Foster/White, Seattle, USA

Northwest Annual, Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, Washington, USA

6500 x 20: International Color Xerox 6500 Invitational, and/or alternative space, Seattle, USA

1977 International Flux Fest, curated: George Maciunas, and/or alternative space, Seattle, USA

National Drawing Show, curated Wayne Thiebaud, Del Mar Museum, Corpus Christie, Texas, USA

Alexander Sasanoff gallery, 2 solo shows, Seattle, USA

Statement

Works primarily in liquid acrylics combined with various drawing media, such as soft pastels. Pioneered heat-set art serigraphs which exhibit superior color depth, a wider range of transparency, and more robust surface qualities than traditional art serigraph inks.

"ReeL's technique exhibits a high degree of transparency, layering, sfgraffito and graffitto, with a strong sense of hand, the hand-made, and an absence of any references to the material world. This work can be seen as a thorough-going critique of materialism, the machine or machine-made, and the triumph of feeling over the manufactured. For ReeL, marking is a defining characteristic of the human and the primordial act of signification and meaning for human consciousness." [Nikki Arconi]

ReeL: "I am inspired by micro and nano-photography, sex, poorly-erased whiteboards, sidewalks, graffitii everywhere, old walls, ruins, ancient stone, rock surfaces, fire, sand, cave paintings, hieroglyphs, esoteric texts, Hubble Deep Field photographs, photographs of things we cannot see with the naked eye, foundries, wars, concrete, electron microsope imagery, cellular processes, cytoplasm, clouds, wood, other painters, water, railroad box car markings, hobo signs, scratched surfaces, ice, worn surfaces, snowstorms, wind, music, the human voice, human biology, weather, the night sky, the inside of an eyeball, the surfaces of other planets, scars, deserts, scorched earth, and the accidental, which is not really indeterminate, but the result of decisions made on another plane of consciousness."

Bio

Born in Seattle, U.S.A. in 1952. Attended Whitman College, majoring in mathematics; the University of Washington in mathematics, art history and studio art; University of California, Berkeley. Studied art history with Rainer Crone, painting with Jacob Lawrence and Michael Spafford, sumi-e with George Tsutakawa, Chinese brush with Hsai Chen.

Wrote on art for Vanguard, ArtExpress, High Performance, ArtWeek, Bellevue Journal-American, Seattle Voice. Seattle Arts Commission Special Task Force for media, and Special Task Force for educational Institutions in the late 70s. Taught art history, color theory, life painting, and design at Seattle Central Community College for 5 years before leaving Seattle in 1984. Current studio is in Ventura, California, north of Los Angeles.

Has had over a three dozen solo exhibitions and 100 group shows, including shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Society of Graphic Artists [SAGA], New York City, the Seattle Art Museum, Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. His work is in private collections in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Berlin, London, Paris, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Seattle, Santa Fe, Houston, and Indianapolis.

_________________________________________

Erik ReeL on Facebook

1318. OJO, pastel and acrylic on canvas cm 107 x 92