SCOTT REEDER: Ideas (cont.)

Canada is pleased to present Ideas (cont.), a one-person exhibition by Scott Reeder.

September 9 — October 17, 2026.

Scott Reeder’s new paintings pose questions: what is acceptable subject matter for art and how absurd can something become if an idea is carried to the edges of logic and good taste? This boundary pushing exhibition includes list paintings, abstract works, and portraits of skeletons and dogs doing human stuff.

Whether enjoying the temperate climes of the south of France with a glass of white wine on the veranda or lost in revery while surfing the web late at night, Reeder’s dogs are both totally alone yet completely comfortable in their own fur. It’s hard not to ascribe feelings and personalities to Reeder’s canine subjects. There is a whiff of the fraught psychological space that painters, such as Matisse, had for their models who served as formal props and objects of fantasy and desire.

The abstractions are both casual and sincere, suggesting that Reeder may be in the vicinity of lyricism at least the zip code. A voracious looker, Reeder has expressed a love of Mary Heilman’s work and her confidence in laying down large blocks of buoyant color for the love of a particular hue. In the same spirit Reeder continues his investigation of non-image driven painting. He collages and upcycles drawings from his studio walls and floor onto his canvases along with splats of acrylic that gives the paintings a democratic unruliness.

Whatever subject he chooses, the real motif is the complexity of art objects and their relationship to a maker. Reeder’s individualism runs through the work, always responding to the strangeness around him. Such absurdity calls to mind Rene Magritte, an artist and a movement of one, especially his later Vache paintings.