Sao Paulo Turtleneck, 2010

Working in the woodshop at Parson’s School of Design, Alan Reid draws inspiration, in an ironic way, and finds useful materials, in a work with what you’ve got kind of way, through the discarded scraps of wood left behind from drill presses, routers, and other power tools. In his second show at Lisa Cooley, With, Reid uses these bits and pieces and presents them atop seven large canvases, upon which rest seven lethargic, ephemeral females.

The Official, 2010

The women lounge casually, yet as is made obvious in their facial expressions, they seem irked at the scattered bits of wood scraps and dowels dotting the surface of their domain, their canvas. Not entirely upset, just annoyed. Although the canvas is naturally where Reid’s artistic hand lies, the playful additions of these haphazard scrap materials add another dimension, literally, to the show. On Sao Paulo Turtleneck, the colored wood balls died with polychrome look like juicy plums, sticky lollipops, and red rubber balls. Each ball has a different surface texture, some are matte and some are glossy, some you can see the wood grain and some are illusory smooth surfaces. Just as the three-dimensional objects rest lightly above the canvas’ surface, almost as if magnetized rather than glued on, the artist’s marks of colored pencil and caran d’ache seem so feathery on the surface – so fragile, it might fall off. Even the moles on the womens’ skin, such as in Mintadi, are speckled so delicately it’s as if they appeared organically, magically, rather than applied with the artist’s touch of ink. The silk that clothes the bodies of the woman in Highland is so light and airy that if a breeze came through the open door of the gallery, the woman would likely be left nude!

Lightness as a theme in this exhibition, is especially amplified with the addition of the painted wood attachments. Even though less obvious in The Official, the wood attachments act almost like a grammatical point – a paranthesis or a semicolon adding something to a longer sentence. The single stripe crossing the top-right diagonal is an elegant, quiet trio of ochre, teal, and bare balsa wood. Reid’s technique, both on the canvas and on top of the canvas, is unique and almost shocking in its simplicity.

(all images courtesy of Lisa Cooley Fine Art)