Chris Reid: Nothing Smells in Absolute Zero
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Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba 710 Rosser Ave, Suite 2, Brandon, Manitoba R7A 0K9

Chris Reid "Fourth and Louise with Icicles," 2019
mat board and mixed media sculpture. Photo: Rob Lovatt
On Thursday, April 8, 2021 at 7:00 PM, the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba will host a reception occasioned by two exhibitions, i {heart} Brandon in the Community Gallery, and Nothing Smells in Absolute Zero in the Main Gallery.
In homelessness studies, “absolute zero” means that no person is without a secure and stable place to spend the night. Its pragmatic sibling, “functional zero” aspires that for every person who is sleeping precariously, there is a place standing empty where they could be secure. With the paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations exhibited in Nothing Smells in Absolute Zero, Chris Reid invites you to wonder with her as you wander through a dreamscape built from the very real places that serve as homes for the unhoused population of Brandon, Manitoba.
Wielding her unique brand of pop-surrealism, Reid implies the significance of these citizens by rendering fragile structures substantial. Shadows and hybrid figures stand watch as sentries or as ghosts. Devoid of human presence, representations of places are understood to be portraits in negative, if one believes that a person’s substance can be gleaned by what they carry with them when there is no safe place to leave anything behind.
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