Jennifer Wynne Reeves, “All Right for Now”

Reeves (1963–2014) is a classic example of an artist’s artist—which is to say someone whose work is too unique to satisfy the tastes of curators or collectors looking for the hottest thing. Her sensibility could be described as mid-western yet metaphysical, plainspoken yet otherworldly. Working in painting, photography and drawing, Reeves creates landscapes and interiors that resemble theatrical sets populated with, for want of a better term, anthropomorphized abstractions: Blobs or scribbles that function almost like actors onstage, delivering lines such as “Bitter Sweet,” “It’s Alright” or “Mirroring Society” through word bubbles. Though enigmatic, these phrases underline the emotional tenor of Reeves’s mis-en-scenes. This show features small-scale, exquisitely rendered gouaches completed between the late 1990s and her untimely death from brain cancer.