Kevin Jennings & Steve Reber: Prestidigitation
@ slow
2153 W 21st Street
Opening Saturday, September 21st, from 6PM - 9PM
On view through Saturday, October 19th
Steve Reber crafts. No adolescent summer activity. Crafts in that way that emphasizes that things are well done. Knows his materials. Works clean. Upon first glance, his sculptures fit rather neatly in a thing. Can’t help but conjure the very best of post minimalist formal sculpture. Refined.
Steve is more restless than the refinement. Stories break through those sumptuous surfaces. A very grown up version of adolescent humor reveals itself in hunger model. It is not entirely apparent whether the sculpture claims to be a kind of press designed to generate those rock hard abs, or whether it is a personal monument to vapid perfection. Something of a vulnerable confession drives Steve’s images.
Kevin Jennings is also telling a tale. He plays magician’s illusion with the art illusion to get to another point of view. Wordplay becomes the narrative conflict. Conjures a wizard’s beard, distills it to its magical essence separate and equal from the face it is disguising.
Kevin pretends that he doesn’t do very much. Leaves the doing to someone with mad skills, or only implies that the doing is done-then we’re caught knowing that there is not another someone pulling the strings, Kevin is his own designer, his own assistance. Behind the clever trickster is a simple raw tenderness.
Both artists work to please you; make work that isn’t set up to defy you—we know that sort who pride themselves on being challenging. But don’t let that ease you into faulty reasoning. Steve and Kevin are not just making nice little nice things.
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Tags: Kevin Jennings, Pilsen, Slow, Steve Reber
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