Rob Reynolds: Overview

Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to announce Rob Reynolds: Overview, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, on view April 29 – June 4. With a focus on ecology and human-caused climate change, Reynolds projects seek to make the unseen visible. The exhibition is accompanied by an essay by Tobias Rees (Director, Berggruen Institute), and an interview between the artist and Emma Cline (Author, The Girls).

Overview takes its name from the overview effect––a total shift in consciousness typically experienced by astronauts when they see Earth from space for the first time. This is evident in Reynolds’ Earthrise paintings, which are based on the famous photo taken by William Anders, an astronaut on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 as they were heading back to earth from a trip around the moon. It is one of the most famous images in the history of photography, and credited as having launched the ecology movement for many environmentalists. The exhibition is also an ‘overview’ of Reynolds’ work over the past ten years.

While Reynolds’ paintings depict paralyzing, apocalyptic events and the realization of non-human agency over the natural world, they are always imbued with hope. “The effect of Reynolds’ paintings is that both humans and nature cease to exist –– cease to exist as being the seeing thing, cease to exist as indexes of a sublime nature and what emerges is a new kind of beauty,” notes Rees. “Instead both humans and nature become something else, something still tentative, explorative, experimental: they become planetary.”