Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Naomi Reis @ The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey


Every time I am in front of Reis’s work I find myself think about the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the fifties black and white movie monster who rises from the swamps to chase unsuspecting victims. The woods of my childhood in New Jersey were not nearly as overgrown nor were the greens ever as varied as in Ries’s leafy collages. The work has a layered density that is stunning and overwhelming, an impenetrable visual wall of greens. Like walking through a moist jungle far away or the glimpses that fly by when running away from the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Reis’s work is dense, but her palate is crisp and upbeat. It celebrates the source material and reflects an artistic view that seems much more at ease lost in the woods. In contrast to me, whose only reference point for this kind of nature is movies and scary ones at that.



Through June 25th

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