Thursday, December 03, 2009

Tony Reans: Pop Sensations exhibit at WDC on Line Ave at Margaret Place from Dec 1 - 18

Says artist Tony Reans, "I’m exhibiting my recent cartoon paintings at the Woman’s Department Club of Shreveport, from December 1-18 (it’s a civic organization, and not just for women, thank you very much).The exhibition is called “Pop Sensations, popular culture in fun bite sizes.

I was invited to exhibit after a suggestion from a fellow Shreveport artist, Ginger Briggs.

The paintings reflect my own interpretations of America's often oversimplified mindset, in which all subjects seem to undergo a reduction to mere icons. Sometimes banal, sometimes poignant, these paintings challenge the viewer to go beyond the canvas and put the subjects back into the larger whole, into their proper places in the zeitgeist.


Meaning, we have a tendency to oversimplify things, replacing the important bits with icons, symbols or scaled-down, easy-on-the-brain concepts. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just the way things are. A good example is the we reduce “I love you,” to “I heart you,” with a cartoon drawing of a heart.

I’ve used newspaper and magazine clippings in the backgrounds of the paintings. These introduce an element from the real world into the cartoon icon, creating juxtapositions and (hopefully) thought-provoking social commentaries.

The image above is a space alien robot of my own design. I call him Cog. The clippings are real UFO sighting reports that I found on the National UFO Reporting Center’s website. http://www.nuforc.org/index.html


To see the exhibition, contact the WDC to find out when the facility will be open."
318-222-4186

1 comment:

Tony Reans said...

Thanks for the listing, Robert!

I also want to thank Chris Culliton, DDS (of Bossier). As my patron, his support has made my fine art career possible this year.

The Woman's Dept. Club is just the first exhibition I have planned for the near future, so these pieces will find their way to artspace and probably other venues around the area in 2010.