ancestors. reese bowes | may 3-31, 2025
"We are not what your eyes want to see."
"We are not our ancestors, we are your ancestors."
The Imperfecta Gallery presents ANCESTORS, an exhibition featuring Portland artist Reese Bowes. On view on May 3-31, the show features artworks created to draw one's attention "away from the digital edifice and interface, by subverting it and destructing it and choosing materials that mimic and mock it."
Pieces in the show are the artist's 3rd iteration of a series that started in 2012, which explored "femininity and the power of magic in a society that has lost its grip on what it means to dream."
As the artist explains: "To think beyond the strictures and structures erected around our physical and mental bodies is an ever present struggle. The commodification of expression in all its forms, a weight bearing down on all of us. Belief in other worlds and benign futures becoming mere figments of our collective imagination."
With ANCESTORS, the artist explores how decoupled true images have become from reality yet reminds us that we have the ability of creating work that maintains humanity, employing technology in its construction. In his words: "There are only eyes and brains and hands here. It is my hope that your eyes see something different than mine have in the creation of these works. That you see a new story that is different than the hidden one not surfaced in these words before you."
Each piece in the exhibition is a collection of images superimposed and overexposed, then chromatically divided equally across three plates that serve to create a static hologram. The technique originated when the artist worked on light field display technologies in 2018 and explorations continued during his residency with the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's "Creative Exchange Lab" in 2022, where he produced multilayered, translucent digital display versions of interactive works that explored movement studies performed by professional modern and street dancers in Portland and Washington, DC.
The show debuts on May 3rd, with an Opening Reception from 5 to 7pm.
About Reese Bowes
Reese's work – from electronic and analog music production to fine art illustration, digital interactive multimedia installations – focus on the intersections between human-human interactions as modified by technological interfaces, and the lack of representation of peoples of African ancestry, and other often marginalized groups, in technical and design fields.