BEN REEVES YACHT ROCK
September 7th – September 21st
In his latest body of work, Ben Reeves constructs landscapes filled with a sense of leisure found in the Canadian outdoors: windsurfing, paddleboarding, sailing, skiing and skating. His gesturally painted vignettes are perpetually sun-kissed and invite us to recall our own fond memories of similar activities with their intense pink, blue and yellow hues.
The title of the show, YachtRock , is derived from the genre of music synonymous with the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Toto and Canada’s own Gordon Lightfoot. Its discography includes much-loved anthems like “Long Train Runnin’” and “Hold the Line”, songs suffused with a 70s-80s ethos of prosperity and escapism. The music that fills a yacht rock playlist is catchy, idyllic, and highly produced.
Reeves’ paintings are similarly utopian, and in turn, they call out their own production. Reeves is acutely aware that landscape painting as a genre relies on the construction of an ideal, romanticised place rather than a mimetic representation of reality. His impastoed surfaces that simultaneously describe realistic subjects while revealing the physicality of the medium itself, allude to this paradox.
“I thinkofyachtrockas a weirdmix ofthegenuine andironic. I feelthesameway aboutthese paintings.Theycelebrateutopicbeautyandjoy whiletheexcess ofit ondisplayalludesto a subtledoubtorimpossibilitythatunderliesthesenotions.” - Ben Reeves
Essential to yacht rock is the idea of escape. Reeves captures the human urge to get away from the harsh realities of the world by embracing nature. In one of the larger paintings in the exhibition, a windsurfer’s sail partially obscures him from our view. He is adrift alone in a sea of deep blues and purples, above him the sun sets in a canary yellow sky. The work is also an example of Reeves’ impressive facility with oil paint, encouraging it to mimic the object or material it is describing both in rendering and feeling. The sail of the windsurfer is so thinly painted that the texture of the canvas can still be detected, allowing us to believe in its translucency revealing the shadow of a figure behind. The water on the other hand, is painted in thick, impastoed brushstrokes that physically differentiate the surface of the rough water with the smooth sail.
In contrast to the larger canvas works in the exhibition where the compositions are largely fabricated from Reeves’ memory and intuition, the subjects for the oil on paper works are sourced primarily from everyday scenes captured with his own iPhone. This relatively recent medium for Reeves has opened up new avenues for inspiration - they allow for more freedom and spontaneity which in turn has impacted his approach in other areas of his practice.
$ 22,000.00
LookingNorthThroughTrees , 2024
oil on paper
24 1/4 x 16 in.
SOLD
$ 15,000.00
Opposite: Ben Reeves, X-Country , 2024, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in., $ 9,000.00
N ext: Ben Reeves, MinutebyMinute , 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas, 68 x 87 in., $ 26,000.00
Previous: Ben Reeves, Sun , 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas over panel (with canvas collage), 18 x 24 in., $ 8,000.00
Opposite: Ben Reeves, Boardwalk,2024, oil on paper, 16 x 12 in., $ 5,200.00
Ben Reeves
BehindtheCommunityCenter(AgriculturalLandReserve) , 2024 oil on paper
12 x 16 in.
$ 5,200.00
Ben Reeves grew up in Lynn Valley on the North Shore of Vancouver and currently resides in Tsawwassen, a suburb outside of the city. The culture and landscape of the West Coast has always been a powerful source of inspiration in his work. Reeves paints primarily from memory, recently venturing into using his own photographs as source material. Reeves is best known for the physicality of his surfaces, applying large mounds of paint to represent snow or rain while making no attempt to disguise its material construction.
Ben Reeves was born in 1969. He is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. He has exhibited his work extensively in Canada as well as in the United States, United Kingdom and China. In 2018, Reeves' survey exhibition, FloatingAmongPhantoms , was held at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam, British Columbia for which a catalogue was published. Other important exhibitions include ThePaintingProject:ASnapshot ofPaintinginCanada , Galerie de l'UQUAM, Montreal, 2013 and FortheRecord: DrawingContemporaryLife , Vancouver Art Gallery, 2003. Reeves' works are held in numerous collections including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.