MAY 14th - JUNE 11th 2022

The gallery is proud to present Sierra Mist a solo exhibition by Chicago-based artist Tyson Reeder.

M. LeBlanc is proud to present Tyson Reeder’s debut solo exhibition at the gallery. Titled ‘Sierra Mist’, the exhibition features new paintings and drawings from the acclaimed Chicago-based artist. Among the number of works, a recurring motif appears - that of the lone rider traversing a wide landscape, cresting into sun-bleached vistas and rolling down through rich fertile valleys. Regarding the works, Reeder recalls:

“...all these highways and biker vistas sort of came out of pandemic isolation where a #natureishealing, back-to-nature feeling was in the air - road trips and camping were suddenly the only way to travel. Also nature as one enduring sublime sort of creeping back into art in this post-digital, post-truth age possibly because nature might be the only thing that doesn't lie.”

Little in these United States compares in its representation of sublimity and freedom than the open road and the motorcycle. Throughout the course of the 20th century, the vastness of American deserts and coastlines was met by one particular figure, that of the lone rider. In particular, the chopped Harley Davidson, with its raked front end and ape-hanger handlebars, is Reeder’s chosen subject. An iconic American machine immortalized in the ‘68 cult classic, Easy Rider.

Whether it be past the storied beatnik haven of Big Sur along the Pacific Coast Highway, into the piney foothills of the Sierras past Fresno, or onto the hot stretches of asphalt that traverse the rugged Mojave, Reeder’s newest compositions are shaped by the American west as a theater of imagination. Hillsides and bridges, rocky outcroppings and tired palms, all of Reeder’s renderings gently nod to this nation’s history of pastoral painting from Thomas Hart Benton to Raymond Pettibon. However, through his own admission, Reeder has little connection to motorcycle culture, palm trees, or any other vague tropicalia - these subjects are mediated to the artist through ‘the neon Fruitopia of pop cans, t-shirts, manicures, and air-brushed vans’, as opposed to direct experience.

Rendered in thin washes of acrylic and delicate graphite line, Reeder’s compositions appear to effortlessly flow from his hand. The works indulge the elasticity of the drawn line, as opposed to any kind of bravura muscular brushstrokes or sequences of opaque hues, Reeder renders pictorial space through intuitive blobs, spills, and patterns that hang onto each other and cohesively coalesce in the viewer’s mind. Speaking to this idea, Reeder states:

‘I’ve always looked to painters that tap into a kind of unhinged compulsion to draw and create and destroy worlds with the most rudimentary of materials.

Tyson Reeder (b. 1974, Fairfax, VA) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Recent solo exhibitions include 29 Palms at Gana Art, Seoul (2021); Gorp at CANADA, New York (2020); Office Baroque, Brussels (2017); TV Dinner at Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2015). His work has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions at venues such as Pace Gallery, New York; Acquavella Galleries, Palm Beach; Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York; Venus over Manhattan, Los Angeles; Peter Freeman Gallery, New York; Jack Hanley, San Francisco, among others. Reeder has co-organized many group exhibitions and projects, including Drunk vs. Stoned at Gavin Brown's Enterprise (2005), The Early Show at White Columns (2005); The Dark Fair at the Swiss Institute New York and the Köelnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2008). Reeder performed at the Serpentine Pavilion, Serpentine Gallery, London as part of the fashion collective George De George. Reeder’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, and Flash Art, among other publications, and paintings are included in the collections of the MoMA and the Rubell Family Collection.