"(Reeves) won't traffic in fashionable non-sequiturs. A
nanotechnology of the brush can't be layered on a resuscitated
classical motif. But still her thoughts bump up against each other.
Ideas abrade. The collision, though, has nothing to do with short
attention span theater. Sound bites and vain blurbs proliferate,
but she would argue that we still have the novel. Big ideas may
decompose, but you just need to know where to look for the dustbin.
History is garbage, but it's littered with shiny souvenirs. Bend
down and grasp one. If you can hold it in your hand as long as
Reeves suspends it in her mind you might be congenial to her work.
Check your defensive irony and reflexive sarcasm at the door;
sadly, your hipster cynicism won't get you past the velvet rope.
There are no typical Reeves paintings so I'll just start with
one. Postmodernists Discover Soft Ice Cream. Laugh, but be done
with it, for the message is more oblique...Reeves' dialog is a
Mystery Science Theater of spilled confessions...Her figures are
crippled but oddly elastic. Survivors...She is not interested
in closeting the messy drama of the self. No lacquered chinoiserie
coats her Beckettian tete-a-tete...
...It bears mentioning, I think, given Reeves' claymation roughness.
Her fondness for the figure viewed through an X-ray machine. Her
words are inchoate bleats because...well, because the most mellifluous
speech is just a series of controlled shrieks anyway. In Minimalists
Find their Groove, Reeves garnishes and decorates our malformed
catechism of need with a garland of flowers. But, as in all her
work, the disguise is merely provisional."
