Bio
Reese Wallace is an interdisciplinary artist living in Oakland, California. His work combines classical oil painting practices with nontraditional substrates. His work explores ideas surrounding heritage, identity, and the performance of masculinity. Subjects are appropriated from his childhood growing up in religiously conservative Utah and images of western Americana. In addition his recent works attempt to explore a unique moment in American history, where our lifestyle and geography is proved unsustainable by events like the pandemic and climate change.
"My work is intentionally nostalgic often about the space left unoccupied, a semi autobiographic memoir told by an unreliable narrator. I think there is an inevitability to the people we are, that we are largely the result of hyper specific circumstances that we do not control or remember clearly. Art for me is the process in which I examine how I arrived at this exact moment. The work combines traditional oil painting and drawing practices with non traditional substrates to create tension between subject and material. The work invites the viewer to observe the dissonant spaces between the facts of our lives and the reality we live in. My practice is interdisciplinary, informed by images of rural americana and appropriated religious iconography. My works are explorations of performative modes of self destructive masculinity and intergenerational trauma; while attempting to explore a moment in western history, where our lifestyle and geography is proved unsustainable by events like the pandemic and climate change. It's an opportunity to observe how human indifference can impact the vulnerable."
Selected Work
