Rachel Reynolds Z

Region: Midwest

Website: http://rachelreynoldslookseewonder.com

City / State: Detroit, MI

I value art that seeks to inspire and provoke. It is with these intentions that I paint, collaborate, and create. The series titled Initiate Your Gaze functions as an installation by mirroring the visual details found in the surrounding exhibition space. Engaging with architectural elements of the room and with art by other artists, the paintings encourage the act of looking.

The process of making the paintings requires staging and photographing the installation months before the exhibition opens, then hanging the work where it will echo what the viewer sees. The site-specific paintings cause the audience to contemplate their perceptual experience of the immediate environment. The work is complete when perceived and activated by an audience. The series of paintings reflects formal perspectives of an interior space while raising perceptual and conceptual questions about time.

Looking often leads to curiosity and contemplation. Actively perceiving one’s environment is the first step toward changing it or one’s expectations of it.

Great thanks to my artist collaborators Robert Zahorsky and Corrie Baldauf.