Get Bent

I’ve always been interested in the forces of gravity and how we contend with that ever-present burden through our bodies and our architecture.  I find the forces of compression and tension to be poetic as we think about how our bodies, our societies, and our structures all contend with and reflect upon each other in this ongoing struggle to stand.  Metal is amazing in how it can reach and extend into space and matter — at times seeming to defy the limits of gravity.  I wanted to make work that would be technical in its construction, light in its actual weight, but a contradiction compositionally by so directly representing gravity.

I find the practice of Yoga in its physical and spiritual expression to be an exploration of these forces in order to better learn how to embrace and be empowered in the continual struggles we all face in our lives.  I’m excited to have these works situated in a space that directly is contending with the issues that this work seeks to also contend with.  Society and culture, like steel, are sometimes is tough to bend. But the tools we need can be acquired and many of them are in the teachings Yoga offers.

Will Reeves is an artist, designer, and craftsperson of Providence RI. He studied Sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and has been creating both functional and nonfunctional metal works for nearly two decades.  He currently manages and facility and teaches at the RISD. He is also a founding member of the collaborative artist space called the Wurks, also in Providence RI.

Will is proud to have been able to make a place here in the great state of Rhode Island by creating many municipal goods through the Steel Yard Public Projects initiative. Will has notably consulted and fabricated for artist where works have been exhibited all over the US, but notable at MassMoCA, the DeCordova, the ICA, the Shed, the RISD Museum and many more.  Though generous with his skill and knowledge and proud of engaging and assisting with some many artist, Will looks forward to showing and exhibiting more of his own work.

Partner Exhibition:

OBI- THINGS TO CHEW ON: OBSERVATIONS FROM A DOG’S WANDERINGS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

This body of work comes out of the many long walks and talks I have with Will.  He said he was a bit short on work and asked if I could help and as art is no big deal I said I could prop him up a bit.

Often on excursions around the neighborhood I found myself fascinated by all the detritus.  The debris was becoming treasure.  These castaways were artifacts of the new epoch.  I began seeing myself as some ill-fated archeologist in the fever dream of David Macaulay’s Motel of Mysteries, or a more cynical Mark Dion engaging in a dig.  I would laugh and jest to Will about what sort of broken lives these objects came from, the shattered lives these objects had.  I found myself obsessing over these musing.

It didn’t just stop on the street.  I started digging in our own trash, determined to give new life to things.  I felt the need to embed my own mark on these remnants, and in a stroke making them works of art.  I found them now imbued with social purpose and critique. This sedimentary layer that humanity has created will be the only last mark litter paved by debase behavior each of these salvaged objects represent.  It begs the question I ask Tara Donovan and myself:  ‘Does Art Rot?’

Born in New York, Obi splits his time between the City and Providence RI.  Obi dropped out of RISD after one summer of school after read the Calvin Tompkins’s biography on Duchamp.  This pivotal moment led to deep disillusion and an epiphany.  After much brooding Obi proclaimed he is ready to “game” the art world.  A young brash up start, this “snarky puppy” has really made a splash.  As Jerry Saltz said “Obi is uniquely positioned to offer exacting criticism on the human condition… it is a dog’s world we’re living in.”

Currently his practice is more of that of a street photographer wandering and meandering the streets.  Finding those places, those smells, those moments that really tell whole experience of what it means to be human in America.