About News Practice CV
My practice
as presented sequentially in the portfolio.
This site is an overview covering the last 40 years of my practice. Accompanying each series period is a brief description of my thoughts and practices at the time. Certain structural aspects are returned to having proven versatile in adapting ideas to perform. Experimenting with various materials and processes I found their qualities dicate outcomes. I enjoy the feeling of being a novice that comes with experimenting and uncertainty.
Drawing is central to my practice, ideas start from putting pencil to paper. Right through the process to the completed work everything is contingent on making marks on a surface.
86 – 89 ……. Spectacle
‘Expo’ and ‘Gumball’
These two bodies of work show towering structures, either precariously balanced or on the verge of collapse.
In ‘Expo’, horses are coupled with a second scene hovering above. Structured on scaffolding, these competing narratives are soon to meet a similar end.
‘Gumball’, pictures vertical structures composed of interdependent objects, rotating around a teetering central axis.
Stacking, sense of motion and interdependent parts exhibited here are pictoral elements I return to regularly in subsequent works.
Select images exhibited at the Diane Farris Gallery, Vancouver BC 1989 and the UBC Fine Arts Gallery, Vancouver BC, 1990
84 – 97 ……. Book Series
Working with books, either as a physical support for paint or as subject matter, occupied me for 10 years.
Books have fascinated me since childhood. I was always bringing home books way ahead of my comprehensive level. I was attracted to them on an emotional level.
The power in them was transformative, even if I could not completely understand them.
Book Paintings
These sculptural works used hundreds of hard-cover books adhered to plywood to create a relief onto which were painted interiors of cultural institutions.
Nailed, screwed, glued and painted shut, the books’ power as a symbol shift from their content to a broader Gestalt interpretation.
CAG ‘92
In this series of paintings I was interested in displays, advertising and pop art.
Architectural stacking of various books and products together, cross reference a narrative which breaks with the focus usually attributed to marketing and pop art.
Tapestry
‘Chakra’ and ‘Kamasutra’
These two series of hand painted book covers hover in space to form a grid. I was thinking of a tapestry as the book slight perspectival shift suggest warp and weft.
The works though referencing Indian spiritual practices display no discernible trace of such or influence.
The connection was made on an abstract level through a mutual interest in numbers, arrangements, colour and content. I used these principles as a guide in positioning the works’ various book titles.
Swing
‘Swing’ and ‘Silver Screens’
The last two series in the progression of the book covers, built abstract constructions in space and linked both past book paintings with the next series’ (97-05) concerns. The first set, ‘Swing’, breaks out from the patterns set in the Tapestry series. The new arrangements create motion and movement with new shapes and duplication.
The second set, ‘Silver Screens’ has qualities of the silver ground, physical dimensions and 24 trapezoidal forms containing a cyclical progression of images, all invoking cinema. The paintings’ titles borrow from movie thrillers while a Rorschach like composition feeds into the psychological undertone suggested by the work’s title.
‘Silver Screen’ was a transitional body of work, through the introductions of reflective grounds, mirroring, Rorschach like interiors and simultaneous contrast it led to the subsequent five series.
97 – 05 ……. Institution
The ‘Institution’ encompasses five series of work that explore the instrumentality of the modern world. The progression of each series moves further into abstraction as the viewer/subject becomes successively more implicated by the works processes and the institutional practices until in the final work they are completely enveloped by a manifested structure.
55 Institutions
‘55 Institutions’ renders schools, hospitals, prisons etc. But the institutional interiors appear with limited distinguishing marks in order to transgress the instrumentality of the spaces.
This series is realized by painting from a source image, one half of the interior onto canvas, folding and pressing onto the other half. The result is an interior of mirrored halves.
The series ‘Industry’ and ‘Diptychs’ employ the same folding process. This time using both the right and left sides from the source image to create a diptych.
Industry
‘Industry’ uses transparent oil colour to depict manufacturing spaces. The doubling of the image and colour saturation recall B movies or comic books where trauma is often indicated by double vision or colour saturation. The works are painted on silverized vinyl.
All series of the institution employ light sensitive grounds such as shimmering vinyls, mirrors and plexiglass. My interests lie in the surface responses to environmental conditions as the viewer moves around or through an exhibition space.
Diptych
‘Diptych’ illustrates a perspectival projection toward the viewer of a mathematically conceived structure, modelled after a super computer.
I was thinking of the Rorschach when folding over one half of the ground to produce interiors of mirrored halves. The idea of the Rorschach test to examine emotional functioning was a way to introduce institutional practices.
In this work, by linking the Rorschach to the supercomputer I was thinking of AI or SciFi movies. The doubling of the image had me thinking of the sentient computer, HAL 9000 and its meltdown in 2001 Space Odyssey.
Mirror Maze
Five unicursal mazes are painted on 120 cm diameter convex surveillance mirrors. The maze envelops the room as reflected in the mirror. This acts as a veil partially obsuring the reflected view, confusing impressions of identity and location.
The installation of the surveillance mirrors within an installation creates a dialogue between civil obedience and personal expression.
Crystal Lab
A labyrinthine installation constructed from forty-seven plexiglas sheets with metal post and beam supports. Hand painted on each panel are coded signs: equations, graphs and other databased sources.
The shimmering or manufacturing surfaces of the five series recall the futurist project. This time this work has a different idea for the future.
Negotiating the labyrinth, the viewer encounters layers of programmic structure. The deep sense of space and the overwhelming abundance of information transforms into a blur.
I like to think that when exiting, ‘Crystal Lab’ is analogous to emerging from Plato’s cave.
10 – 13 ……. Parataxis
Parataxis is a two part work, where one is the consequence of the other.
In the first phase, dozens of coloured figures interlock with the grey ground which also turn out to be figures. The eye oscillates between the positive and negative as one serves as the reverse of the other.
The second phase is drawn from the entanglements of the first phase.
Parataxis I
This work begins by drawing a continuous line across the surface of the canvas. The line wends through space and time to form a tapestry. Similarly to the Aboriginal tradition describes by Bruce Chatwin’s “Songlines” where the landscape is sung into existence, drawing for me offers similar possibilities.
Parataxis II
This second grouping is connected to the first phase by extraction and articulation. The narrative encounters now have a limited cast, including Charlotte Corday, a harlequin, Penelope, among others.
These scenarios range from the mundane to the absurd; some go looking for justice and end up on the wrong side of history, others have created for themselves a fantasy yet remain embroiled in another’s.
08 – ……. Paperworks
Drawing for me is a thinking process similar to what writing is for an author.
Responding to developments on paper, drawing is perhaps the most immediate of practices. I believe a line in space creates it’s own momentum, if lucky you get to follow. Recognizing where the line has led is analogous to having an epiphany.
Stoners (‘Sunday Painter’) (2008)
A series created over ten Sundays. These works were performed while under the influence of psychotropic agents. Each Sunday, a visual diary, containing seven visual panels, charted the agents’ effects.
Highlighting my amateurism, was the fact I held no degree in any of the fields of research that would have found my findings insightful. Still the minds appetite for knowledge and adventure in lieu of proper accreditation has become a symptom of the times.
Sight Gag Zeitgeist (2013-14)
A hundred or so vignettes sprang from having worked with children. Conceived as a variety TV sketch show, these line drawings explore the dynamics between the great educator and their master pupil. In these works, each looks to pull off a fast one on the other.
Here the triadic order of teacher, student and classroom, results not in the absolute idealism imagined by Hegel, but in an end to history, science and geography.
I imagine returning these line drawings back to the classroom as a colouring book.
First Thing In The Morning, Last Thing At Night (2016-17)
The title recalls waking hours and the exhaustive toll of daily toil, but in fact the series was conceived lingering in bed, contemplating while recovering from surgery.
These drawings employ visual metaphors to re conceptual current events. Commenting on the absurd and ironic tone of the everyday acted as a panacea both in the opportunity to question authority by engaging in social criticism and by providing a focus during my rehabilitation.
Secret Life Of Cameras (2019-20)
‘The Secret Life Of Cameras’ is a collection of sixty line drawings, with the idea that camera’s have been with us since creation.
In the scenarios presented, the cameras act as subject, taking centre stage, and with no devices to capture their escapades, their antics had to be drawn.
For these drawings I imagined a camera looking into a mirror, a face looks back, each imagening one to be the other.
Elemental Forms And Their Human Equivalents (2015/2020)
This is series of watercolours, positioning portraits with environmental forces. The pairings form diptychs that are stacked rather usual format of being hung side by side. This was done to suggest film stills, motion and transformation.
The diptych is a format I return to often, finding the split dividing the two sections is where the true narrative is revealed.
Twenty individual watercolours were rendered in 2015, this year I decided to make limited edition prints of each set. The price point reflects the use of Hahnemühle Albrecht Durer paper.
20 – 21 ……. Playful Nature
‘However We Play We Never Outgrow Our Playful Natures’
This series employs visual metonyms and where a diptych is viewed as an open book while a vocabulary is made up of three pictogram-like characters.
Two of the pictograms are Buddha and Aphrodite which reference Eastern and Western points of view. The philosopher/witness, a Guston inspired Bean Head, is the third and becomes the engaged observer.
The figures interplay on these pages suggests picture poems through semblance, repetition and structure.
However We Play We Never Outgrow Our Playful Natures (I – 2020)
Watercolours on rag, done in 2020 as prepatory works for paintings to be done in 2021
However We Play We Never Outgrow Our Playful Natures (II – 2021)
Paintings done on raw canvas, 2021, continuing on the idea of shared space from the same series watercolour prepatory works done in 2020.
Whatever the nature of the differences, these paintings show how cultures adapt and are reinvigorated by informal exchanges.
2018 ……. Poems
Tissue Of The Soul ©Charles Rea
‘Tissue Of The Soul’ (©Charles Rea) is a series of poems written and inspired after the images ‘First Thing In The Morning, Last Thing At Night‘.
Poems will be uploaded to the News (blog) page under the category Poems ’18
The Website Navigation
Portfolio – painting history from 1985 t0 2000, separated into blocks of parallel works, Spectacle, 85-89, Books, 86-97, Institution, 97-05, Parataxis, 10-13, and Paperworks 08 –
Available – paintings still available from series through the years, available for pickup directly from the Studio in Vancouver, BC
Shop – the shop for inkjet prints (or giclees) and original one of a kind paperworks, signed and shipped from the Studio
My Practice – this page, central to a dialogue about my work, compacting all the text spread through the portfolio section
News – my blog, images and poem sidebars to my day and a connection to Instagram posts
Twitter & Instagram – both Twitter (@paintrea) and Instagram (@charlesrea.studio) will have notifications of new prints in the Shop and new Posts on the Blog
About/Contact – my about page has a contact form where you can email me and has the option to check a box to be on a email list for any new notifications
Documentation Photo Credits
K. Clarke (55 institutions), S. Douglas (expo series), B. Howell (stoner, parataxis I and II), M. Janeway (2005 – current), J. Jardine (1986-2005), Tricera Print (parataxis II, first thing)
Platform – WordPress / Kalium Theme by Laborator
COPYRIGHT 2020: Charles Rea All Rights Reserved