Helwaser Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by the artist Brian Michael Reed titled Elemental Trance. The exhibition highlights the artist’s remarkable history of global community studies, showing the energetic layers that compose the world around us.

For more than 20 years, Reed has explored how pigment and drawn line, particularly conveying motifs through a lens of surreal seriality, can generate visual frequencies that can lead the viewer into a resonance with his works: optically and energetically. An awareness arises from the artist’s sensitivity to perceive interrelationships between the ecological and cultural structures that abound and manifest in the viewer through experiencing the works.

Reed’s endless wanderlust and insatiable curiosity have led him to immerse himself in diverse cultures, religions, and practices, shaping his worldly belief system. The artist’s practice involves creating field studios in remote locations; therefore, works on paper have become a much-beloved medium that provides immediacy of creation and presentation. Embedded within a shamanistic and essentialist ideology, Reed’s way of seeing empowers him to perceive and connect with the energy enveloping our surroundings. His vivid narratives translate these vibrations and energies that remain imperceptible to the everyday eye. Reed has developed a conceptual practice he refers to as Pictorial Anthropology, in which he depicts environmental evolution and cultural development to highlight global themes of love, loss, tragedy, memory, death, and the afterlife. In his choice of subjects, Reed often explores making the meek mythical; birds, crawfish, dragonflies, frogs, cactus clusters, and cherry blossoms take on symbolic meanings through Reed’s unique amalgamating of diverse disciplines into visual representations.

Reed’s anthropomorphic depictions instill profound psychological and spiritual relationships, forging links between all living entities and emphasizing the inherent unity in our existence. Reed has developed a distinct visual language characterized by repetitive mark-making, vibrant colors, and continuously inventing a new alphabet of designs to write into his narrative. By delving into this vibrant realm, the viewer is encouraged to explore the depth and nuanced perspectives that Reed’s artistry offers.

The Fake Lotus and Evolution showcase Reed’s masterful abstraction of crawfish, which dwell in the murky depths of pond mud as they undergo transformative processes. These artworks incorporate lotus seed elements, portraying the crawfish as they elongate their legs and witness their claws swell, mirroring the growth of lotus plant blossoms before breaching the pond’s surface. Reed’s juxtaposition of the profound darkness conveyed by India ink and the scratchboard technique against the vivid and translucent colors highlights the inherent struggle of transformation: the arduous task of shedding one’s old shell and maturing into a new one. Reed’s self-made scratchboard technique can also be seen in works The Creation of the Holly River Diptych, Trout Flood, and Harvest Time.

The lotus root pattern holds a profound significance within Reed’s artistic repertoire, enrapturing viewers with its weighted meanings. Among Reed’s notable works, Dragonfly Lotus stands out as a striking representation, blending the cultural and spiritual importance of the lotus with the transformative journey of the dragonfly throughout its life cycle. This abstract and conceptual piece artfully mirrors the lotus’ transformation as it seeks purity while emerging from the muddy depths of a pond and reaching upward. Similarly, the dragonfly nymph emerges from the water to undergo its own metamorphosis, ultimately spreading its wings and taking flight. Reed ingeniously incorporates the dragonfly’s wings as petals for the lotus, enabling a remarkable fusion of subjects. The insect’s legs and clawed feet are a reminder of the transformative nature that can anchor itself within every individual.

Reed employs various techniques, including carved block printmaking, scratchboard, hand drawing with colored pencil, and painting with translucent pigments, to include his signature motif, the lotus pattern, in his artwork. These techniques effectively convey the theme of spiritual purification, which has a personal significance for Reed.

Brian Michael Reed (b. 1984) is an American multi-media artist, who draws creative energy from the study of a wide variety of cultural experiences, global religions, and art techniques. The artist was born in Charleston, West Virginia, and now practices between Shanghai, New York City, and Ivydale, West Virginia. Brian implements a conceptual practice of pictorial anthropology, giving voice through his works to broad communities in a collaborative investigation of specific repeating symbolism and cultural practices understood through regional immersion.

The artist communicates these expressions in his practice through a wide variety of mediums with emphasis on performance, sculpture, and works on paper. Additionally, Reed is fond of sourcing found material in which he activates their spiritual energy. The art reflects the cornucopia of customs, folklore, spirituality, and mythology with which Reed has interacted throughout projects and studies.

Reed utilizes art to advocate for unity and foster international understanding. To date his projects have encompassed regional immersions in China, Japan, Indonesia, the Appalachian region of the United States, Mexico, and currently in Israel. The works highlight common aspects of cultures to serve as a bridge between groups separated by geographic and linguistic barriers. Reed elevates our shared humanity over political divisions that exist through rhetoric, creating empathy for one another. The artist’s practice embodies global themes of love, loss, tragedy, memory, death, and the afterlife.