Just Deserts
May 24 – June 14th
“Just Deserts” is an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Evan Reiser. The works are loosely based on a recurring scene in “Looney Tunes” cartoons with Wile. E. Coyote. In each cartoon the coyote, in his neverending attempts to catch the Roadrunner, falls off a cliff to the desert floor below. The abstracted desert landscape changes from one scene to another, but the result is the same.
The coyote is clever and cunning, using strange combinations of materials to create traps and machinations which backfire and offer little utlility. Resolute in his desires, he creates imaginative processes and tact to chase after an impossible goal. In this, Reiser sees a parable to the life of an artist: a career in which ritualistic, Sisyphean failure is the point, not the punishment.
Evan Reiser is a San Francisco-based visual artist. His works reference historical narratives, highlighting ambiguity and subjectivity in what is often believed as fact. He has exhibited throughout the Bay Area, New York, and Florence, Italy. In addition to his own artistic practice, Reiser is a curator and a proprietor of City Limits, a gallery in Oakland’s Jack London Square.
