Allison Reimus
Feelings in a Familar Framework
November 6 - December 5, 2021
Man in Space by Billy Collins
All you have to do is listen to the way a man sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,
and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine when the men from earth arrive in their rocket, why they are always standing in a semicircle with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart, their breasts protected by hard metal disks.
Feelings in a Familiar Framework Allison Reimus at Left Field Gallery By Zach Seeger
Allison Reimus is a painter who stitches, drapes, bleaches, and hangs painted forms that weave dualities of painted toil with diligent rebellion. Upright and unabridged, Reimus’ canvas confront conventional notions of domesticity with a drumbeat of labor, sarcasm, and acute painterly chops. In her current show Feelings in a Familiar Framework at Left Field gallery, Reimus goes on tour, barnstorming her domestic masterpieces to the west coast. Serving as a National Lampoon’s Vacation subterfuge tour with her family across the country, Reimus’ exhibition demonstrates that all good work must travel. The notion predates 20th century scrappiness, to a time where art in America had to defend its mere existence. This drive is not lost on Reimus, whose Midwestern roots split her practice into the responsible and the rebellious; perfectly crafted angst vs. painterly solemnity.
Her work represents a sign of sincere postmodernism, a condition to which Reimus subscribes wholeheartedly.
Her work is deeply embedded in tender considerations of the domestic: bleach, lint balls, and hanging threads react against structure. It’s Reimus’ way of countering a familiar framework. Her work is both specific, and generalized, ritual buried in Bataille, untied and reformed.
Reimus’ work is large and meticulously constructed from start to finish. The forms reveal themselves as part of the process: stretcher bars, paint pushed through burlap, and swatches of found fabric denote both a personal and shared history through women’s labor and craft. Buried in all the textural lushness is the zinger: each piece’s title is derived from text that is stitched front and center. At first glance, the text is sometimes lost on the viewer, but this is the point. Reimus’ work cloaks the text in clever visual bait: the painting. Layer upon layer, Reimus rewards us with color, textures, and forms built through process. It is, however, her endless humor, embedded in the work in the form of paint brushes sticking out, and stringy thread tears that provide the Feelings.
