Overpopulation, inequality and sustainability are just a few of the topics the art of Sebastian Lloyd Rees addresses.His work is built upon a regimen of field studies, travel, and his own research into the silk routes of modern life. Sourcing material from street vendors to the internet, Rees creates found-object assemblages, composed from things he encounters on his daily explorations. Often the objects that Rees picks up and their subsequent repurposing puzzle together interlinked networks of design, production, use, reuse, and disposal, whether it be a discarded cardboard box found on a sidewalk, or a scrap of wood from a broken pallet left in a gutter. The work is as forensic as it is aesthetic; it celebrates evidence as much as it does color. As a body of work that is constantly expanding, it is at any given moment merely framed by the limits of the gallery walls.
Rees recently visited Mumbai, India where he made daily trips to the Crawford Market, the Chor Bazaar (a.k.a the Thieves Market), and various sites throughout the slums of the city. There he gathered materials from roofing tarpaulin to coir rope. In the exhibition context, where the dusty tones and frenetic energy of a street fair are conjured up, these objects create a slipstream of information, artifacts bartered for and found, narratives of makers and their makings juxtaposed with local elements from Chinatown, the Lower Eastside and Bushwick. Rees takes objects, does something to them, and then does something else to them. The exhibition at 41 Orchard Street will include a series of installations, wall-based works, and found-object sculpture that converse with the ideas of contemporary artists such as Klara Liden, Mike Nelson and Yuji Agematsu.
Hoarding 2015 (Varick Ave by Meadow St 24 January 13:56- 2015) is part of an ongoing series made from found plywood panels, the type used by contractors to barricade a construction site. Designed to protect and pacify local communities, they are often painted a monochrome color, either black or blue, green or red, varying by city and neighborhood. Rees takes these panels from specific sites and edits them in studio. In their own way they critique the contemporary cult of abstraction insofar as they are created not by the artist’s hand, per se, but by the time that they are exposed to street life. As accretions of overpainted graffiti and pollution the dark green Hoardings on view, his first created in New York City, seem ancient and modern, symbolic of both progress and division. In the center of the gallery is a large installation of hands dressed in shirt sleeves. Ragpickers’ Court (2015), with its parts sourced from countries throughout Asia, is a flotilla made from scrap wood and metal. As a field of upraised hands, they stand for unity and surrender.
The exhibition “Vendor” at ROOM EAST, the artist’s first solo presentation in the US, will open on Sunday 22 February 6-8pm. An off-site installation of large, site-specific work entitled “Numberless crowded streets, high growth of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising towards clear skies” will open Thursday 5 March 6-9pm at A+E Studios, 160 West Broadway in Tribeca. Rees also works collaboratively with the anthropologist Ali Eisa as the Lloyd Corporation, and together they are represented by Carlos Ishikawa in London. They recently participated in “Mirrorcity” an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London for which they invited street hawkers and sign holders into the museum. Rees recently created a large-scale installation as part of a group show in Turin organized by Art Tuner; and his work will be included in a forthcoming exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin and Paris. He will have a solo exhibition at Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin in late 2015.
For downloadable exhibition material, click here.
