Love Thy Neighbor by James Reyes

Ki Smith Gallery presented Love Thy Neighbor by James Reyes on June 3 and will be on view until July 2 of this year. The works in this exhibition are complex amalgams of memory, imagination, and fantasy depicted through rich oil paintings that move between loose gestural abstraction and highly rendered stylized figuration. Reyes’s process is reactive and intuitive, using broad action-packed gestures as a cryptic map to pull out subject matter, conger memory, and allow the abstraction of the underpainting to act as a portal into the subconscious.

Photo Credit: Roman Dean

The push and pull between the layers of the work mirrors memory and imagination, where some moments are crystal clear while others fade into swirls of abstraction. Reyes’s works depict a range of subjects and archetypes, often intermingling figures with animals that suggest hidden desire, emotions, and the unconscious.