Particularly shaped by his own youth in the 1990s, his recent works have incorporated things like a marijuana leaf, a dragon-emblazoned chain wallet, metal grommets, and the ubiquitous (in the 90s) Stussy symbol. Reflecting and recouping elements from American youth culture, Reini’s works question how we package, mark, and express ourselves through manufactured symbols of identity. Reini has also used images of Mickey Mouse—Disney’s anthropomorphic icon—in numerous works, including in this pair of works, The More You Want…, …The Less You Get . Both works are made using latex and canvas in cut-out patterns that form the shape of the famous mouse, and his female counterpart, Minnie. Reini’s use of these iconic characters is pointed and swift: even the simple suggestion of a form, implied through the cuts in the canvas, is enough to flood viewers with associations and memories. These shared pop images, which Reini evokes through negation, through absence, become the shorthand for a modern culture bereft of real connections.
In the work of American artist Zach Reini, elements of recent pop culture mix with art historical references to create works tinged with playfulness and darkness. Indebted to pop art as well as modernist painting, much of Reini’s work revolves around markers that adorn the human body, defining and branding their wearer.
Since 2005, Charles Avery has devoted his practice to the perpetual description of a fictional island...
Wheat’s work is built on a strong conceptual framework that weaves together commentary on social and political issues and the radical potential for change...
The photographic series Wrapped Future II by Lim Sokchanlina brings fences used on construction sites to enclose the surrounding areas, to different locations, lakes, valleys and forests; and places them at the center of works to obscure the beautiful Cambodian landscape...
In his paper-based work, Medellin-New York , Rojas uses coca leaves and dollar bills to spell out the words of the two cities, tied together through the illicit exchange of materials used to make the word, gesturing towards the uncomfortable reality of the drug trafficking trade and the complicity of both America and Colombia within that economic system....
In 2011-12 the San Francisco-based collective Futurefarmers staged a 10-part series of conversations and collaborations with scientists, theorist, and philosophers inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’s film, Powers of Ten (1977)...
Superb production values and special effects that in the hands of Miguel Angel Rios do not get in the way or distracts from the content and deep essay of this work...