| |
|
Statement
The aesthetic experience for me is
religious and I often refer to my work as such. It is how I make sense
of my everyday world; organize my anxiety into existential meaning. For
me, this happens through performance...the performance of art making.
Through a medium, I translate the action of lived experience. Sometimes
this action is a dialog between self-proposed rituals and the symbolism
of the materials, sometimes it is simply a way to imprint life into a
contemplative visual experience. Naturally I find that some form of
humor is necessary to go on existing, and I hope this manifests itself
in the process or translation.
Anxieties about life and death (the existential
crisis) drive my work. Rituals as diverse as the birthday and
breathing often become embedded in my process. Images like the candle,
the bird, and the egg often appear in my work. I try to emphasize the
significance of the material and its connotations; such as copper's
healing properties and the willow's (charcoal) analgesic history.
I feel my work incorporates traditions of
thought from John Dewey to Martin Heidegger. I see a resemblance between
my work and that of Joseph Bueys, Yves Kline, Willem DeKooning, The
Viennese Actionist and contemporary artist such as Cai Guo-Qiang and
Rudolf Stingel.
Biography
Jeremiah D. Reeves was born in
Denver
,
Colorado
…the city with 250+ blue-skied, sunny days a year.
After spending most of his childhood and adolescence there, he
moved to a rural town in
Kentucky
with a population of less than 600 people.
From
Kentucky
he moved to
Brooklyn
with some time studying abroad in
Venice
. He remembers the time of
living in
Kentucky
as one of poverty and silence, recalling “We knew we were poor.
Our cabinets were empty….everything came in a can or boxes with
black and white labels: Powdered
Milk, Eggs, and Pork. Color
was a luxury we couldn’t afford. We
ate charity. We lived below
every abstract and physical line…without color and in silence.”
He also recollects, “While living in
Kentucky
, I had a lot of time to think…mostly about things that I was taught
in school. I was going to a
Catholic school at the time…and Religion was constantly on my mind.
I wanted to go to school to be an astronaut, as I had an
inclination for mathematics and went to space camp as a child, but I
never went to space. If I
could do it all over…I still wouldn’t …instead, I would dance; I
would be a dancer. I am much
too old for that now. Plus,
I kind of do that anyway. Painting
isn’t much different. The
physical performance of
painting is very important to my work.
I became an artist because of that…the unifying power of the
aesthetic experience... how it can re-connect
things to the present—as a living verb.”
When
Jeremiah isn’t assimilating sounds, lines, space, words and color into
works of art, he can be found pretending to work with his head always in
a book at the
Whitney
Museum
or at
Marymount
Manhattan
College
where he is an assistant for a printmaking class.
However, he says his favorite way to spend time is with his son;
“he is brilliant…he gives me all his, I mean…my
best ideas.”
|
|
|