In Wet & Wild Josh Reames presents a new series of paintings which employ commonly used artistic techniques, such as trompe-l’oeil, action painting, graphic design and rudimentary drawing, all existing on one plane. The artworks by Josh Reames consider abstraction and painting in relation to the internet and digital image searches via Google Image and Tumblr.

Reames’ conceptual framework functions as a kind of filtration device for cultural by-product and its attending relativism, literally flattening disparate images and references and thereby removing their hierarchy. In this evanescence, a compendium of signs, text and symbols (emoji, letters, text, and numbers—doubling as marks, sprayed or squeezed), objects (cigarettes, fried eggs, bombs, tennis balls), and cultural icons (Gumby, female breasts) are all flattened to the same-level composition. “One thing that I am really interested in is the way that the Internet—browsing, blog rolling, etc.—takes away the hierarchy of image importance, meaning, and connection.  (…) I think about painting in a similar way, where images, marks, art historical references, and everyday objects are all depicted on the same level, contained in the same rectangle, emerging out of one painting and into another.”

Josh Reames - Wet & Wild
Brand New Gallery, April 9 - May 12
www.brandnew-gallery.com