About the work

Scott Reeder is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan. Reeder uses simple forms in his paintings, sculptures, and installations, to address complex ideas and to deploy cultural critique.

Reeder works in a wide range of media, including public sculpture, painting, sculpture, neon, and installation. His public artworks have been exhibited extensively in cities such as Miami and Chicago, and have received extensive coverage in the press, often sparking debate because of their multifaceted potential meanings.

Reeder has also become known for his cartoon like style, which includes the use of expressive contour lines and bright colours, demonstrated infamously in his Cute Communists series (2007), which featured images of famous communist leaders painted with doll-like cuteness.

His other subjects have included paintings of anthropomorphic objects, works that offer a critical reconsideration of the familiar and the mundane, and humorous references to iconic art historical works, as in Cops Ascending a Staircase (2009) (a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s most famous work). More recently, Reeder has created a series of spaghetti paintings, in which the silhouettes of various types of cooked and uncooked spaghetti are spray painted onto a surface in abstract compositions.

About the artist

SCOTT REEDER is a multidisciplinary artist who uses deadpan humor and cultural critique to expose the absurdity of life. His newest series draws from the traditions of still-life painting to project emotional affect and social relationships onto inanimate objects such as bread and butter, which he paints in brightly coloured, cartoon-like settings. In his ongoing output of glazed, ceramic sculpture, Reeder presents an indexical array of ordinary and maligned objects, facsimiles from daily life that draw attention to consumer habits, desires and vices and are presented together without distinction. Reeder first became known for his text-based paintings and parodies of process painting, as well as for his feature-length improvised sci-fi film titled Moon Dust and his possibly ironic art fairs (The Milwaukee International and Dark Fair.) Reeder is based in Chicago, Illinois where he is an Associate professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Solo and two-person exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Canada, New York, NY; Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York, NY; 356 Mission, Los Angeles, CA; Marlborough, New York, NY; Lisa Cooley, New York, NY; Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL and Berlin, Germany ; Luce Gallery, Torino, Italy; Daniel Reich Gallery, New York, NY; Jack Hanley, San Francisco, CA; among others. His film Moon Dust has screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati; Cinemarfa Film Festival, Marfa; Strangelove Film Festival, London, UK; and Anthology Film Archives, New York. A book on Reeder's work titled Ideas (cont.) was published by Mousse in 2019.

More work by Scott Reeder