Santa Barbara — The GraySpace art gallery located in the heart of Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone will be hosting the first solo exhibition in Santa Barbara in a decade of improvisational non-objective painter, Erik ReeL. The long-anticipated exhibition was originally scheduled for this last winter, but was cancelled and rescheduled due to the Thomas Fire and subsequent mudslides, which both closed the GraySpace gallery and forced Rhonda and Erik’s evacuation.
Recent cognitive studies show that certain types of non-objective imagery actually trigger significantly more of our brain cells than representational and recognizable imagery, creating new resonances, or new capacities, for the brain. This raises the possibility of “tuning” the brain for greater cognitive functioning and complexity. An ongoing project for ReeL is the creation of what he calls tuning fields, images specifically constructed to fine-tune our cognitive functioning, as well as assist in our perception of his other work.
Titled Zero Point, in reference to the “zero”, or ground, point in the meaning of a mark or marking, ReeL’s GraySpace exhibition will feature the major new, paintings Babel, and Origins, plus a series of never-before-exhibited studies for ReeL’s tuning fields.
A special aspect of this exhibition is that GraySpace has coupled ReeL’s solo show with a show guest-curated by Rhonda P. Hill, ReeL’s wife, titled Blurred Boundaries: Fashion as an Art, which will introduce a group of exciting, contemporary, international fashion designers to Santa Barbara.
Note: This exhibition is presented in conjunction with Blurred Boundaries: Fashion as an Art in the GraySpace Annex, curated by Rhonda P. Hill.
About the artist: Erik ReeL’s work explores issues around signification, meaning in mark making, and cognitive processing, with work represented by collections in New York, Berlin, London, Seoul, Los Angeles, Paris, Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Oakland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Indianapolis, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Fe [NM]. Public collections include Seattle City Light, the Museum of Ventura County, the City of Seattle, and the Morris Graves Museum of Art.
