IT'S NOT DOWN ON ANY MAP; TRUE PLACES NEVER ARE

Bailey Contemporary Arts

Pompano Beach, FL

Exhibition: December 1- 29, 2023

It is not down on any map, true places never are.

---Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Taking its name from an enigmatic passage in the book, Moby Dick, by 19 th century

American author, Herman Melville, this exhibition by Renée Rey explores the concepts

of place, memory, transformation, and their relationship to the current social and political

landscape.

What are true places?

Melville leads us on a journey in which the definition of true places is deeper than the

external physical world of water and land mass. With literary symbolism, he points to

true places as inner memories, feelings, and attachments about specific locations

accumulated over time.

In paintings, mixed-media and installation art, Rey creates immersive fantastical worlds.

Her places are not on any map.

As in Melville’s odyssey, Rey draws from a lifetime of powerful emotions and memories

of awe-inspiring nature, risks of human-made technologies, and rewards of acceptance

and kinship with diverse people and cultures. They all give rise to desire, loss, and

spirituality. They are responses to a complex and uncertain global arena.

These ideas are seeded in a childhood mystical vision that grew into a belief of a Grand

Unity: an internal oneness with nature and people all around the world. There is no

hierarchy. All of creation is of equal importance.

The idea of transformation is pivotal to her work. Whereas Melville’s literary physical

stage is largely set on the wild seas between continents, Rey’s visual stages of

alternative worlds are set in ethereal uninhabited skies. With a nod to the 18 th century

Italian Rococo painter, Gionvanni Battista Tiepolo, she creates mythical imagery that

freely move in and out of the clouds in a state of unpredictable change. She is

interested in free and ephemeral associations that can be made in imagined celestial

spaces versus cues from an earth-bound perspective of traditional landscape and

figurative painting. This is her internal language.

In the process, Rey gradually reveals layers of symbolism, interpretation, and mystery

with unexpected changes to and blending of gestural paint strokes, dripping paint, tree

branches, string, clay, and sandpaper.

Rey shares her true places as a means for others to discover theirs. She encourages

viewers to look longer at the art, make associations between her artistic details and their

personal experiences, and uncover new connections and meaning for themselves

through this visual journey.