Images by Christian Ramirez.
Wylywn Dominic Reyes: The Early Years
26 July – 18 August 2013
With The Early Years Wylwyn Dominic Reyes slyly challenges preconceptions about art viewing with witty and deceptively simple subtractions and insertions into MOCA’s Great Hall. Availing himself to a distinctive take on classic conceptual tactics, he brings a welcome mix of humor and serious inquiry to his art making. Insightfully toying with expectations, he gently prods the audience to look past the accepted surface of things. Notions of identity and consciousness are at the heart of Reyes’ undertaking, but contrary to what is often the case he favors winning, ambiguous nuance over explicitness. It’s all (or can be interpreted as being) “about” these things, though a large part of the appeal of his evaluations of social norms and how they apply to museum going is their lack of heavy-handed didacticism. Instead a droll sense of wonder is evoked, a fresh mixture woefully missing in much contemporary art.