NEW/NOW: Tony de los Reyes

Dec 1, 2012 to Mar 3, 2013

Opening Reception
Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012, 5:30-7 p.m.

Upcoming NEW/NOW artist Tony de los Reyes has spent the last decade visually interpreting and expanding on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. He infuses the classic genre and narrative tradition of “history painting” with modern aesthetics, drawing on minimalism, abstraction, and a wide variety of media not merely to illustrate, but to “reconstruct the epic in a transitional space between literature, political history, and contemporary art.”

In constructing dramatic permutations of the text, de los Reyes creates a mythic vision of America and its enduring national obsessions, envisioning the same insatiable and self-destructive nature that definesMoby Dick’s Captain Ahab. Raw linen stained with sumi ink, pure black and white pigments, and sanguine red bister visually enhance the aura of bloodlust and violence in de los Reyes evocative and allegorical work.

De los Reyes has held countless exhibitions on the West Coast and throughout the country. Last year, he received a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship Award and was named the Mid-Career Artist Fellow by California Community Foundation in recognition of his outstanding creative accomplishments.

The NEW/NOW Series is made possible by the generous support of Marzena and Greg Silpe.

New Britain Museum of American Art
56 Lexington st
56 Lexington st
New Britain, CT
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