Josh Reames

Background

Josh Reames was born in 1985, in Dallas, Texas, United States.

Education

In 2007, Josh received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Texas. Later, in 2012, he got a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Career

During his career, Josh took part in numerous group exhibitions, including "ArtHouston: Introductions" at Darke Gallery, Houston, in 2009; "A Healthy Skepticism" at Swimming Pool Project Space, Chicago, Illinois, in 2011; "Ground Floor 2012" at Hyde Park Art Center, Hyde Park, Illinois, in 2012; "For Your Eyes Only" at Annarumma Gallery, Naples, Italy, in 2014; "Baudrillard's America" at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, in 2015; "Imagine" at Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy, in 2016; "Postcards from America" at Celaya Brothers Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico, in 2017; "Pluto" at Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, California, in 2018; "The Celebration of Painting" at Sophis Gallery, Seoul, Korea, in 2019, and many others.

Also, he participated in many solo and two-person exhibitions, including "Anti-Matter" at Darke Gallery, Houston, Texas, in 2009; "Trash Day" at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, in 2016; "Texting while driving" at Bill Brady Gallery, Miami, Florida, in 2017, and others.

Reames acted as an artist-in-residence in Ox-Bow fall residency in 2012, La Brea Residency, Los Angeles, California, in 2018, and Fountainhead Residency, Miami, Florida, in 2019. Moreover, he lectured at different educational establishments, including Northpark University in 2011, Northeastern Illinois University and California College of the Arts in 2014.

Currently, the painter lives and works in Brooklyn, New York City.

Achievements

• Josh Reames is a well-known painter, who gained prominence for his works, that apply contemporary tools available on the Internet to create surreal patchworks of contemporary signs and symbols.
  
  His work was offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices, ranging from $3,250 to $5,625, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. In 2017, Reames' work, entitled "Mud", was sold for $5,625 at Phillips auction house, in New York City.
  
  The painter received the Club Choice Award in 2010. Also, he attained Joseph and Emily Gidwitz Scholarship in 2011 and Lucie Hartrath Scholarship in 2012.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • All I Want

  • Bird Catcher

  • Mush Mouth

  • Headless

  • Worlds Apart

  • Rock, paper, scissors

  • Drinking in the shower

  • Flowers (pink)

  • Making Friends

  • Hippie Stuff

  • NO

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Slide

  • United Snakes

  • Bather

  • Lady Liberty

  • Road closed

  • Self Reflexive/Reflexive Self

  • Snakes in the grass

  • Mud

  • Hers

Views

Josh Reames' work considers abstraction and painting in relation to the Internet and is informed by the strange, new space, where a majority of viewership takes place online through blogs and websites. In these paintings, depth, dimension and the artist's hand are typically lost in translation from object to image, allowing the information to exist as it might appear on a digital screen.

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), objects (cigarettes, fried eggs, bombs, tennis balls) and cultural icons (Gumby, female breasts) are all flattened to the same-level composition.