Louis Reith // Sto and and O

Born in Hengelo, a small town in the Netherlands, artist Louis Reith (b. 1983) sources printed material and typographic forms to achieve a sharp, stylized approach to collage. A graduate of the Academy for Art and Industry in Enschede, Reith’s crisp compositions balance the mechanical and the natural, the figurative and the abstract that address the unique relationship between architecture and nature. Reith’s latest exhibition, Sto and and o at Loom Gallery in Milan, has brought this relationship into physical space, with the application of soil on to his built wood panels, and the placement of this same soil underneath these pieces.

In addition to his studio practice, Reith is a member of the Dutch Independent Art Book Publishers, co-organizes an annual graphic arts festival in Antwerp called Grafixx, and runs the publishing platform Jordskred. I asked Louis to speak with me about his latest exhibition and how he sees his work progressing in the coming year. Below is a transcript of our exchange, which touches upon the personal influences on his exhibitions, making album artwork for minimal synth musicians, and his recent move to Zetten.

Ryan Filchak: You recently had your first solo exhibition Sto and and o with Loom Gallery in Milan. Can you speak on this experience and how this show might inform your upcoming exhibition in January at the Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Denmark?

Louis Reith: Sto and and o came about after an extremely difficult and sad time. My wife (artist Martine Johanna) and I both lost our mothers and a dear friend in a very short period of time. My mother had pancreatic cancer and was sick for more than half a year before she passed away at the age of 55. Lood Stof, my solo at Mini Galerie in Amsterdam earlier this year represented my way of dealing with this impending loss. These works are made from book pages printed with black and white wooden vases, plates and bowls, where cut-out beams and dots either balance or break the composition. It is like a game between the ponderousness of death (Lood means lead in Dutch) and the lightness and transient of being (Stof means dust). We closed the exhibition with the release of a book, not only as a catalog but also as an extension of the show in which the works are enigmatically linked to my mother’s battle against her illness.

For Sto and and o—an abstraction of the word stoandando, Italian for I’m going —I have tried to put my rigid idiom into a state of motion, as a metaphor for moving on. The different compositions push you in certain directions. It shows a conversation between my soil paintings on wood and collages. Since I cut the wooden boards and construct the panels myself, I created different layers and depths in the panels for the first time, making them look more like wall sculptures than just paintings.

For my forthcoming exhibition at Charlotte Fogh Gallery, I am further developing this sense of motion, or freedom if you like, in my work. I have been too much focused on constantly measuring and calculating to get things perfect. I think it is time to loosen up a bit. In addition, I am exploring the possibilities for using color again after working in black and white for many years.

Louis Reith, Untitled, 2017, Collage and ink on found book pages. 23 x 15 cm each (diptych).

RF: Before we get into new work, I would like to talk more Sto and and o. The material used for the collage pieces in that show were found-books, sourced by your “personal interest into color, form, theme and balance.” Could you speak more on how you gather these materials and how that process works?

LR: I used to go to flea markets and thrift stores to collect my books, but lately I have been more into browsing archives and the obscure corners of the internet to find my books. Which is also tricky, since I am most likely unable to judge the books on color. My friend and artist Matthew Allen recently sent me a piece of text about Japanese paper that made me realize again how important “color” is in my work;

“Paper, I understand, was invented by the Chinese; but Western paper is to us no more than something to be used, while the texture of Chinese and Japanese paper gives us a certain feeling of warmth, of calm and repose. Even the same white could as well be one colour for Western paper and another for our own. Western paper turns away the light, while our paper seems to take it in, …”

That is exactly what I am looking for in the printed materials for my collages. The printing must be mat at least, the black preferably the blackest ever. I think it is this warmth in paper and print, this sense of depth, that might make you wonder if it actually is printed. It has this kind of hand-made quality to it that really interests me.

I also prefer spaciousness to mask or make full use of the pages’ subject. I like to add or alter as less as possible to show as much of the original image in its new context.

RF: Sto and and o brought your collage work and large-scale wood sculptures into conversation with one another through the use of similar forms in each series. Through these references to visual language, book design and typography continue to feature prominently in your practice. Do you see yourself working towards a larger goal in placing these influences into a gallery context?

LR: It is a way of working that I handle more often; examine a composition into different mediums. The wooden panels move freely in space, where the collages show the same compositions but framed. I do not tend to create new images with my collages but rather use the printed settings and the layout of books as a location for existing or non-existing objects.

Louis Reith, Untitled, 2017. Collage of found book pages, 28 x 21 cm.

Perhaps it is more clear to me, but I hope—despite the cryptic aspect in my work—to convey some sort of narrative within an exhibition. Although I am also pleased when my pieces work separately from each other. But I certainly make my work with the idea of a bigger whole, as a sort of archive, with different phases and events in my life as a common thread. I’m not very theoretical, I’m more of a visual thinker, but I really enjoy linking theories by others to my work. A collector from San Francisco once told me my drawings on discolored book pages reminded him of pieces of an archive from the future, pages from a book yet to be written, a statement that has been very decisive for my work through the years.

RF: Speaking of your standalone pieces, your album artwork for the latest album ‘Strand’ by Bellows, the Italian electro-acoustic composers Giuseppe Lelasi and Nicola Ratti, also uses negative space, and found-book cutouts for the cover composition. Do you approach your work for an album cover differently than the work you make for an exhibition, or do you see these products simply as a continuation and extension of this same process?

LR: First of all, it was an honor to collaborate with Shelter Press. I have been following their work for almost a decade, back in the Kaugummi days. During the making of my Décor zine in 2016, they already suggested that there might be a second project; a record sleeve. Shelter Press is known for their high quality and well-produced records so I was into it immediately.

What I find so interesting about a project like this—in which I basically lend out my work for an album cover—are the unexpected choices of the designer, in this case Bartolomé Sanson, the man behind Shelter Press. It was very refreshing to me how he used the white. Especially the collages for the inner sleeve got a completely new dimension. It really changes your view on my work, at least mine. Initially they wanted a different design. Nicola and Giuseppe were fond of several pieces from my Archiv series from 2015, but I preferred something new. Bartolomé agreed and eventually came with the three diptychs. The way he merged the white in the images with the white space, the cover—as a physical object—almost seems like an architectural thing in itself.

RF: You recently moved your studio from Amsterdam to a more secluded, country setting outside of the city in a small town called Zetten. Has this change in location had an impact on your studio practice, or do you feel yourself unaffected by geography in terms of your life and work?

LR: To be honest it is a little early to say at this point but both Martine and I do feel a sense of freedom when it comes to our studio practice. We survived some quite tragic events last year and though we’re far from stress-free, moving out of Amsterdam, living closer to our family and being surrounded by nature feels absolutely liberating. The Netherlands is a ridiculously small country compared to the States, so geographically you could say we still live in Amsterdam. But it definitely feels like a big change. Yesterday evening in the studio Martine and I had a chat on how much we have done with the need of proving ourselves. And now it is time for a little fun. Not too much though, I also support continuity and embrace melancholy.


Ryan Filchak is an arts writer, editor and educator based in Chicago. Originally from Lexington, Kentucky, Filchak studied English at Transylvania University, and would later receive his Master’s in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Kentucky. He currently works as the Publishing Director of the Chicago artist-run space LVL3 and contributes regularly to Newcity. He also believes the Old Fashioned to have originated in the South, despite citing no supporting evidence for this claim.

The author would like to thank Louis for taking the time to talk with him about his work, his upcoming exhibition, his home, and his adoration for jet black ink on paper. Not previously mentioned, Louis recommended he listen to the song “Doe de Waddy Waddy” by Samantha, and for this he is forever grateful.


Sto and and o ran at Loom Gallery from May 18–June 18, 2017.

Here Comes the Bogeyman: A Review of Tony Lewis at Shane Campbell Gallery

Tony Lewis, Installation view of “Howling” at Shane Campbell Gallery, Fall 2017

Large graphite drawings hang on the four walls of this spacious South Loop gallery. Although seemingly abstract in composition, these five pieces use the symbols of John Robert Gregg’s method of shorthand for their varying, overlapping and bisecting shapes of black, brown and grey. Each set of forms, drawn on paper and mounted on wood, represent the elliptical marks used to dictate expressions of laughter, and the titles of each of these five drawings (“Hardy Har Har!” “He He!” “Ha!” “Ho Ho!” and “Hm Hm!”) reiterate this. Comprising one half of Tony Lewis’ “Howling,” these works reference humor, while the rest evoke fear.

Those familiar with Lewis’ work will recognize the floor drawings that make up the three towering piles of paper in the center of the gallery. Once used as floor covering in his 2015 exhibition “Pall,” these same drawings, as if pulled up by a god hand, ascend above human scale to create a silent yet prescient feeling of terror with their imposing heaviness and history. Although these sculptures are not titled, their forms, like the paintings, reference a particular image not immediately legible upon first encounter. Lewis refers directly to Francisco Goya’s aquatint etching “Here Comes the Bogeyman” (1799), wherein a Spanish mother invokes the folkloric monster coco to frighten her two children into obedience. From Goya’s famous and influential “Los Caprichos” series, the image ridicules the stand-in of superstition for education. The Bogeyman figure’s appearance contains no traditional human qualities aside from scale, and in this context provides Lewis with a figure he can build using his preferred medium and materials to presumably reflect similar themes.

Tony Lewis, Installation view of “Howling” at Shane Campbell Gallery, Fall 2017

His third exhibition with Shane Campbell, “Howling” reaffirms Lewis’ ability to make profound commentary with graphite and pencil that far exceeds familiar capacities of works on paper. For example, the untitled drawings, now molded into the semblance of figure and flesh, speak in their own language to remind us to laugh but also to lock our doors. The drawings on the wall read as laughter, but also as hysterics. In the past, Lewis has addressed issues of authorship, race and class, but now without immediate text-based sources, he uses broader, more ethereal themes that echo these familiar concepts. Important to remember is that Goya’s piece is a critique on social control through fear, and Lewis proves with paper that these totems are insubstantial in the service of terror. Minimal in presentation, “Howling” uses complex source materials to produce a noise of the highest decibels echoing the shouting down of political protest with authoritarian intimidation. However, Lewis does not disparage but instead works to empower the viewer with this reality. Made manifest through material synonymous with erasure, one hopes that the laughter in the space acts as a protest, and will ultimately sound out louder than the speech of scarecrows. (Ryan Filchak)


Tony Lewis’ “Howling” shows through October 21 at Shane Campbell Gallery, 2021 South Wabash.

Unfolding Minimalism: A Review of Robert Burnier at Andrew Rafacz Gallery

Alone, freestanding sculptural work sits like a small black volcano on a white pedestal in the middle of the gallery. Surrounding this piece, fifteen wall-mounted works hang scattershot around the centralized “Palazzo.” These acrylic-on-aluminum sculptures vary in size, color and composition, and together these new works by Chicago-based artist Robert Burnier comprise his latest exhibition at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, “So That Justice Should Be Tyrant.”

Known for his “anti-maquette” process, Burnier’s approach to minimalist sculpture begins with computer-drafted images, or as he calls them “initial conditions,” from which he will shape the material into a physical reality based on their virtual origins. To know this, however, beguiles the effortless way these packed structures occupy space. The smaller works, folded and crumpled in on themselves do not signify simplicity of concept, but instead an endless possibility of language through the rules of production and transformation Burnier employs. For example, larger works such as “Predella” and “Maestà” move away from the more compact, rectangular and square shapes of Burnier’s past work, allowing for the negative spaces to contribute to the landscape of the sculpture, where the voids of material are just as important as the lines made by the folds in the aluminum.

This literal expansion of form indicates an evolution in Burnier’s sculptural concepts and their possible futures. By titling the works with words from L.L. Zamenhof’s utopian language of Esperanto, this use of text in the exhibition makes an additional effort to humble Burnier’s process and reduce the individual artist’s hand in service of these concepts. Through explicit acknowledgment that “nothing, comes from nothing,” this stance relinquishes the human hand of the sculptor to the machine, and a palette “sourced from municipal colors and historically celebrated public works of art,” give themselves to a larger governing body. Burnier’s greatest accomplishment in this exhibition is how well he defines the terms in which he works. As a result, despite his humble attempts to ground his process, the work occupies the space with an undeniable poise and bravado that belies their unassuming construction.

Extending these concepts further, Burnier has selected a group of paintings and works on paper by five Chicago-based artists for the second room of the gallery to run concurrently with his solo show. Mika Horibuchi, David Leggett, Erin Washington, Caleb Yono and Orkideh Torabi make up the “Council” of artists whose prying, introspective styles speak in a contributing and contradictory approach to the minimal visual language of Burnier. (Ryan Filchak)


Robert Burnier’s “So That Justice Should be Tyrant” shows through June 17 at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 West Washington.

Still Lifes for the Touchscreen Age: A Review of Alejandro Jimenez-Flores at ADDS DONNA

Alejandro Jimenez-Flores, Installation view of “Early Roses Filled with Late Snow” at ADDS DONNA, Winter 2017 /Photo: Kaylee Wyant

All of the rectangular-canvas and stretched-paper works by Alejandro Jimenez-Flores hang in the ADDS DONNA space at one upper sight line. This installation peculiarity causes larger pieces, such as “Cosmos, Tall and Wiry,” a highlight of the exhibition, to hang below a familiar height and smaller works to perch oddly just above eye level. Jimenez-Flores uses floral pastel transfers and gestural painting, referencing historically privileged artistic genres, to pursue a casual beauty. By repurposing the goals of still life, the artist works against genre to address personal and moral obligations of identity through his daily experiences of intimacy, both platonic and otherwise.

Alejandro Jimenez-Flores, Installation view of “Early Roses Filled with Late Snow” at ADDS DONNA, Winter 2017 /Photo: Kaylee Wyant

The heavy notion of simply painting flowers being a choice only afforded to the privileged aside, the everyday origins of the exhibition’s source material give the work its power of evocative affection. The works’ layered compositions resonate more when one learns that their sources are images sent to Jimenez-Flores in text messages from friends. For example, the heavy, pink and green marks in the foreground of the exhibition’s namesake, “Early Roses,” weights the abstractions in archived communication. These touch gestures appear again in the aforementioned “Cosmos, Tall and Wiry” in reds and blues reminiscent of the self-consciously limited color palettes of apps. In four soft pastel works entitled “Hugs?,” “Nook,” “Left” and “Leaves,” the Abex phone screen finger flicks are absent, but the repeated image of lush, blossoming roses serve to isolate one component of the source material, while works like “play-ground” double down on color and movement, to say nothing of poetry.

For an artist to pursue beauty for the sake of itself in a rebellious way seems antithetical to contemporary consciousness, but “Early Roses Filled with Late Snow” achieves a caustic self-awareness that fulfills the goals of still life while pushing the genre forward with passion.


Alejandro Jimenez-Flores’ “Early Roses Filled with Late Snow” shows through March 4 at Adds Donna, 3252 West North.

Paintings Glow in a Repurposed Northwest Side Bar: A Review of “The Noise of Art” at Soccer Club Club

Rebecca Morris, “Untitled (#04-16),” 2016. Oil and spray paint on canvas, 68 x 69 inches

Soccer Club Club, owned and operated by Drag City Records, brings together curator Mari Eastman’s work along with artists Rebecca Morris, Mary Weatherford, Anna Sew Hoy and Allison Schulnik for “The Noise of Art.” Judiciously hung, this group exhibition uses the more nuanced aspects of the space to the artists’ advantage, like the coat closet and mirror-backed bar, to smooth the edges on an otherwise unruly placement of works.

On a mahogany wall, in a now-empty bar with gridded floor-to-ceiling accents of the same rich brown color, hangs Mari Eastman’s seven-feet-high painting, “Artist Parties (White Sneakers).” The work depicts a gathering of women, children and a central male figure (the one with the white sneakers) under a crescent moon and feigning palms. Flanking either side of this work, Mary Weatherford’s neon paintings glow with a low intensity that illuminates their hand-painted linen backgrounds, faintly warming the colors nearest the tubes. Appropriately, Eastman and Weatherford’s work hang facing the DJ booth and two commemorative mosaic portraits of the bar’s previous proprietor, a former Polish soccer player of moderate success. Complicit in their surroundings, these works do not highlight the pulsing rhythm of the night, but rather that quiet, buzzing calm that comes after the barkeep has said their last goodbyes and locked the door.

Installation view of “The Noise of Art” at Soccer Club Club, Fall 2016

Anna Sew Hoy’s glazed stoneware and Allison Schulnik’s topographical oil paintings insert moments of faint domesticity into this shrine of days past, with equally casual moments. The cat in Schulnik’s “Orange Kitty” neither appears frightened nor pleased, but simply acknowledging, and the wonderful “Red Amaryllis” work well in dialogue with Schulnik’s own ceramic contributions and Hoy’s vases.

As Eastman’s blue and white painting “Breaking Up By Phone” would suggest, these works contain the inexplicable noise of transition, that moment of anticipation as one song ends and the other has yet to begin. Hanging from a coat hook, Anna Sew Hoy’s “Pallette” best exemplifies this duality as it represents both signs of past use and future potential, nights of celebration remembered and days soundlessly lived. 


Through December 9 at Soccer Club Club, 2923 North Cicero

Composing New Choreography for a Modernist Favorite: A Review of Amalie Jakobsen at Efrain Lopez Gallery

Amalie Jakobsen, Installation view of “PROOON” at Efrain Lopez Gallery, Fall 2016

Berlin-based artist Amalie Jakobsen’s show is an exacting homage to artist El Lissitzky’s “Proun Room” of 1923. Through sculpture and installation, Jakobsen revisits an old song with new choreography.

Eight hollow aluminum pillars clustered in the middle of the space serve as the focal point of this exhibition. Seemingly crushed by Herculean hands, they bend and twist, denying the nature of their material. Covered in galvanized zinc, the gallery’s floor and dividing wall abstractly mirror Jakobsen’s sculpture for an effect that extends past any perceived individuality in the works.

Pairs of contrasting geometric steel pieces flank either side of the aluminum sculptures. Hung symmetrically from the ceiling to mirror their standing counterparts, these blue and red duos create an increasingly fragmented movement in the room. Additionally, to resist the trappings of “objecthood,” Jakobsen applies paint—forty to sixty layers each—over these and the other angular sculptures to give them their color as well as their destabilized status as sculpture.

Jakobsen lithely avoids the polemics between the theatricality of the literalist object and the pictorial of the modernist object in favor of form, color and movement. The visibly painted strokes on the pieces work to move past the more familiar confrontational stance of the minimalist sculpture, and instead reintroduce theories of painting for a well-blended effect on the beholder.

Amalie Jakobsen, “Untitled,” 2016. Aluminum, acrylic paint, 76 x 26 x 20 inches

A single wall piece hangs behind the dividing wall. A variation on the grouped aluminum works, this work resembles a musical eighth note. Ironically the only piece the viewer cannot encircle in their inspection, this work most closely resembles the Lissitzky objects from his “Proun Room.” The two ends, also molded to bend and resist rigidity, peel themselves off the wall to demand a presence and the anticipation of continued movement.

“The image is not a painting, but a structure around which we must circle, looking at it from all sides, peering down from above, investigating from below,” Lissitzky said, and Jakobsen’s evolution of this idea moves toward the fragmentation of her own commanding style, in a way that feels strikingly less rigid, and slightly musical.


Through October 9 at Efrain Lopez Gallery, 901 North Damen

Desires Past and Present: A Review of “Our Lovely Secret Wreck” at Hume Chicago

Installation view of “Our Lovely Secret Wreck” at Hume Gallery with work by Brian T. Leahy, J. Michael Ford and Margaux Crump, Summer 2016/Photo: Brian T. Leahy

Brian T. Leahy brings J. Michael Ford and Houston-based artist Margaux Crump into this artist-run space for “Our Lovely Secret Wreck,” a group show that puts three artists with three distinctive practices into a larger conversation of material-based objects and their relations to desire and attachment.

Organizer and painter Brian T. Leahy places the artists’ work into a setting of domestic familiarity. In one corner of the gallery, backdropped by a floral pattern resembling wallpaper, a condensed group of paintings, sculpture and found objects are forced to respond to the symbols of the familial home that Brian has placed alongside them. Some of Leahy’s works in this cluster incorporate conceptually loftier elements of abstract formalism, but when placed in tandem to a framed MasterCard printed with the image of “Starry Night,” the purpose of painting is thrown into question. And through the use of these same symbols of interior design—armchair, bookshelf, wallpaper—Brian acts as both participant and critic to address the more pragmatic components of painting’s representation of wealth.

Installation view of “Our Lovely Secret Wreck” at Hume Gallery with work by J. Michael Ford and Margaux Crump, Summer 2016/Photo: Brian T. Leahy

J. Michael Ford’s open-ended tube sculptures afford looseness to the interpretation of desire that act like an interstitial mediator between Leahy and Crump. Ford’s “Relaxed Mood” exemplifies the sometimes unpredictable and temperamental behavior of attachment with a mood ring attached to an otherwise rigid white conduit. In contrast, Crump’s “Preserving My Desire” simultaneously achieves both reflection and aggressive assertiveness through her installation of handmade panties encrusted in brining salt. Spiked to the wall like the skinned hides of wild game, the triumph of a fresh kill swirls intensely with intimate memories.

The accompanying catalog for the show, designed and printed by Kitemath, compiles an array of text from the artists and other contributing writers. Adding yet another component to an already densely layered exhibition, this book provides a welcomed opportunity to spend more time with this thoughtful undertaking.


Through August 13 at Hume Chicago, 3243 West Armitage, with a catalogue release on August 5, 6pm-9 pm

Narrative and Language Find Many Forms: A Review of Lauren Spencer King and Hirofumi Suda at Regards

Hirofumi Suda, “Shall Unlock Forms,” 2016. Casted rope in jesmonite with ink (1 of 5 quipu/ketsujou from a larger installation that also includes 11 ink and gouache works on paper, and a ceiling-to-floor spiral curtain), 7 inches diameter

Lauren Spencer King, despite her technical mastery in both drawing and watercolor, adds subtle, yet noticeable imperfections in the presentation of her work that eschew the more reasonable and calming expectations of level installation. A work titled “Fear” hangs too high, while an unframed watercolor called “Everything is Finished Nothing is Dead,” flaunts a kinked edge on the bottom of the piece and a deckled edge on the left side. Both sculptures sit on the floor, leaning against the wall. Slightly disruptive upon first notice, you realize these ticks of incompleteness lure the viewer into the fields of emotional depth from which King draws purpose. For instance, on the gallery’s second floor, King paints a densely layered landscape that packs nostalgia, darkness and spirituality into a strikingly minimal image titled “Witnesses.” Depicting King’s view of the woods behind her childhood home, the work blends the domestic and natural in a way that intersects thematically with Hirofumi Suda’s multifaceted piece “Shall Unlock Forms.”

Lauren Spencer King, “Everything is Finished Nothing is Dead,” 2016. Watercolor on paper on panel, 13 x 16 x 1 inches

Hung to the right of King’s “Witnesses,” these eleven ink-wash drawings displayed on a black painted wall read as familiar, yet indeterminable glyphs of Suda’s conceptual code. In addition to these drawings, five quipu (an Incan counting system made of a series of knotted ropes indicating numerical values) placed throughout the gallery comprise the second sculptural element of “Shall Unlock Forms.” Repeating the use of ink and the charcoal-grey tone of his drawings, Suda makes reference to “pre-civilization” methods of communication through the varied representations of a long-defunct language. Suda makes clear the origin of the discs from an archaeological context, but they are simultaneously meaningless in their abstracted reformation. Suda’s largest contribution to the exhibition, an oversized black spiral of fabric, reaches from floor to ceiling, but instead of concealing, this sinister column invites the viewer to join Suda’s reasonable, if not mystical, research practices. Where King uses natural elements like peach pits and honey to create slow sculptures of personal narratives, Suda forgoes the self to study the associative images involved with language itself.


Through May 28 at Regards, 2216 West Chicago