01 March to 05 April 2007

Andrew Reyes
Beiji Pigedon

Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present Toronto-based artist Andrew Reyes’ first solo exhibition with the gallery. Beiji Pigedon is 11 photographs, 2 sculptures, and 1 drawing presented throughout both of the gallery’s exhibition spaces.

The work in this exhibition was made leading up to, during and following Reyes' recent trip to Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The photographs were taken in a particular psychic space brought about by the correlatives of travel to an unfamiliar city, language barriers, social disjunction, new & impetuous love and the determination to start drawing again. In this mild delirium one is bound to make mistakes. Beiji Pigedon is one such stumble.

“My work is based on categorization and aesthetics. I keep an eye out for sharp energies and work to re-order them into beautiful harmonies. Sometimes I’ll use the mimetic faculty to provoke a double take; this necessitates a multi-disciplinary use of materials and forms. I'm interested in how character is ascribed to form and how this determines content. I don't discriminate in terms of influence. I look at how things mutate and how disparate elements integrate into my consciousness to make meaning.”

Along with the photographs Reyes will show two new sculptures. The sculptures are accumulations of elements assembled into modular wholes. The artist uses museum garbage and Letraset bought from a Montevideo stationary store. These are discrete pieces bound together by circumstance, gravity and faith - a collection of vital signs caught between knowing and unknowing. The lone drawing is the souvenir of an unfortunate incident mitigated by the sighting of a proverbial Virgin Mary. Beiji Pigedon is the sincere and tenuous balance between information and disorientation.