Jon Reed

Region: Pacific Coast

City / State: Los Angeles, CA

The paintings displayed here stem from my fascination with two California landmarks, Hearst Castle in San Simeon and the Getty Villa in Malibu, and the vast collections of art and objects accumulated by their patrons. Particularly, I am interested in the collection of domestic objects and the peculiar circumstances of the home museum. These objects are rendered in a typically Californian hard-edge manner in an effort to push this technique to its figurative limit. The paint has been applied thinly onto a smooth birch panel, collapsing these objects onto a very flat surface, further frustrating their objectness. The almost photorealist representation is reinforced by the stark white backdrop, which emphasizes the museological process of cataloging artifacts while making explicit the painting’s photographic origins.

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March 17th, 2014