Three Reviews: Hank Reavis, Julia Monte, Tania Collette B.
Three solo shows
September was a pretty strong month overall, especially compared to August.
Hank Reavis
Overall, I enjoyed this show. I spent longer with the works than I expected to. But my first impression of this show is still my main critique: Reavis is too married to the pixelation analogy. And his reliance on the analogy seems to be constraining Reavis's vision rather than fulfilling it. Pixelation representing the fragmentation of memory (amongst other things) is, frankly, a facile analogy. One that's not particularly revelatory either.
At the same time, Reavis's work is sensitive, even gentle. I tend to recoil from vague gestures towards nostalgia or feelings (many people create work in this mode, and most of it feels shallow). Reavis's analogy of pixelation, together with his choice of subjects, could lead to the same failure - but Reavis's work doesn't fail. There is an underlying and inescapable care for what he is painting, for the process, and for the memories. And that care is imbued in the work through his process. That's where Reavis's process is successful: not as a metaphor, but as an intensive physical act that treats the subject matter with care. The labor is obvious in the intricate taping and painting of individual pixels, and the viewer has to reckon with the amount of time spent painting fragments of a moment. Reavis's work is contemplative of fleeting moments and the banal, which by itself is not overly new, but Reavis holds onto these for longer than typical - which is something I genuinely appreciated.
Layering and composition are where Reavis really shines. His previous work has gone through several iterations, but layering and composition seem to be central to his process. This pixelation series - an apparently new avenue for Reavis - somewhat departs from this. I saw some behind-the-scenes photo of the making of Hoquiam Window where the white image of the window had a clear blue hued plastic draped over the top. It was an image of that blue plastic over that window that was then pixelated and painted into Hoquiam Window, as I understand it. I love that betrayal of what otherwise looks like an obvious process - I just wish there was more of that, and that I didn't need a behind the scenes photo to appreciate the layering. This new series leaves those ideas unfortunately indistinct in the image presented.
While Hoquiam Window and Flowers (Pair) were the two stand out pieces compositionally, I liked how difficult it was to comprehend The Market when it was in front of me in person. While it looks more like Pike Place Market after it's been compressed to a smaller image, in person the painting was quite large, and it was more difficult to tell what it was an image of. I liked that defamiliarization - it felt like a step further than the pure pixelation analogy. Rather than representing the breakdown of memory by pixelation, I liked that the process actually made something so familiar difficult to recognize. Similarly, in Sun Deli Market, I liked the blurry line in the M. In person, it was difficult to tell what it was. It could have been an artifact like a pole or something in the camera glass from the original photo. The point that I appreciated, in any case, was that there were these aberrations and artifacts at all, as they extend beyond just reading the images as pixelated. They hint at Reavis's past works, and the deeper aspects of his voice and artistry.
Hoquiam Window by Hank Reavis (2026)
Flowers (Pair) by Hank Reavis (2026)
Sun Deli Mart by Hank Reavis (2026)
The Market by Hank Reavis (2026)
Sunlight (Ashford) by Hank Reavis (2024)
Julia Monté
I should mention, at the outset, that Monté and I have talked about her work at length. My thoughts are slightly informed by those conversations, but I (as a rule) don't give too much credence to what artists think about their own work.
On the whole, I like Monté's work, which consists largely of found objects (like foam) arranged and then covered in pulp. Sometimes that pulp is relatively thick, gray, and almost smooth in appearance, whereas other times lots of glass shards are mixed in. Most of the actual arrangements come, as far as I've seen, in two loose categories: architectural and mechanical. For instance in Coliseum, there is an amphitheater/stadium (a recurring theme in Monté's work) held up by a ramshackle and apparently collapsing support system. In Staircase, there is obviously a staircase, and in Overpass there is something vaguely recognizable as some mechanical part. While there's some conceptual elements such as decay and ecological disaster present in every piece, I find myself drawn to other aspects of Monté's work.
Coliseum is Monté's strongest work, and really feels complete. Each of the elements complements the others: the somewhat deformed layers of the amphitheater/stadium, the way in which the layers also look like vertebrae, the glass shards and rough pulp, the collapsing and rickety support structure, all come together cohesively. The support structure is particularly interesting, especially its relative scale. The collapsing supports look more like the frame for a house, and are vastly thicker and longer than actual supports at that scale. This nonsensical, illogical, yet literally necessary structure gives the work an almost hallucinatory feeling. And that support structure is part of the work itself: it's not merely holding up the amphitheater, its an extension of it.
While I like the other works by Monté, they feel more like experiments: they don't have the complexity and completeness of Coliseum. These other works leave me with the feeling that there is more to be explored, materially and compositionally.
I also definitely prefer the works with glass. Simply put, the normal gray looks like an uninteresting sludge compared to the rough, complex, glass works. And while sludge is important to these works, the normal gray does not seem to be put to different ends than the glass sludge, or in a manner that highlights its qualities. Finally, there was just too much in too little a space - these works should have breathing room.
Coliseum by Julia Monté
Staircase by Julia Monté
Overpass by Julia Monté
Tania Colette B.
I really like Colette B.'s other works, and had hoped this would be my show of the year. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. It wasn't a terrible show by any means, it just felt less developed and a bit less interesting than other works I've seen from Colette B.
The show consisted largely of some glass block works, a wooden object shaped like a 5 inch wide ladder, and some brick/rock works with some frosted sheets.
My favorite works were the two using bricks. I liked the contrast between the clean cut and perfect glass/plastic and the very worn bricks. There was also a running theme around lenses and lensing, in particular how lenses can confine and conflict with reality, throughout the show that I also appreciated.
The words that accompanied Colette B.'s show seemed to accurately capture other aspects of the show - in particular, that the works attempt to apprehend how the constant growth required under Capital creates instability in objects, such as when "a house must transform from an object for sheltering to an object for capital production in order to not be demolished." There is enough present in these works, mostly (completely?) made up of building materials, to see how structures and their decay are clearly important to conceptualizing these works. Colette B. is successful in this regard. But in terms of form, I'm just left with the feeling that there isn't enough here. The glass blocks feel especially underutilized.
Additionally, there was an interesting tension between the stated themes and the works themselves: on the one hand, there is the lens of Capital analogy, the financialization and subsequent reframing of objects, but on the other hand there is also the literal presentation of these very same objects, transformed again, preserved alongside the very same lenses. There's a complexity there that I'm not finished thinking through.
While writing, I appreciated contrasting Colette B.'s work with Monté's - the two feel complementary, their differences draw out aspects of their respective works that I hadn't considered, and make me appreciate each more than either show did alone.
