In this new body of work, Kristin Reger has faintly drawn trash, laundry and other quotidian scenes. These subjects are adorned in painstakingly drafted patterns in an attempt to resurrect the discarded objects from their status as waste. A salon-style presentation of 20 large works on paper an... Read more
In this new body of work, Kristin Reger has faintly drawn trash, laundry and other quotidian scenes. These subjects are adorned in painstakingly drafted patterns in an attempt to resurrect the discarded objects from their status as waste. A salon-style presentation of 20 large works on paper and numerous torn sketchbook pages will clutter two gallery spaces.
Filthy July refers in part to the Tim O’Brian novel July, July, a book Reger says is “about frivolous dreams and abounding circumstantial failures”. Much like the perceived themes of July, July, Reger’s drawings attempt to reconcile what she calls “voluntary and involuntary visual consumption”. Voluntary sights include “domestic items, the seemingly insignificant things we surround ourselves with to be happy”, whereas involuntary visions refer to “the crap we see everyday – garbage, traffic, rats.” Broken umbrellas and discarded mattresses in designer prints question: Is aesthetic indulgence simply a cyclical a mechanism to cope with destruction?
Within this schism, the artist cites New York’s unbearable summer heat, cause for the the art world’s annual sabbatical, as a secondary inspiration. “It’s hard to absorb culture when you’re overtaken by the elements,” she says. Patterns – primarily florals and brocades – overtake objects in Reger’s work and suggest nature’s authority to reclaim the manmade. The work evokes the common attraction to repetition seen in a natural environment. It explores the urge to relish in not nature, but rather self-indulgently, a creative simulation of it.
Filthy July examines the city dweller’s & creative connoisseur’s conundrum of decadence. It is an ode to the most American summer: lush and alive, but self-soiled and in decline.
