DEVIN REYNOLDS

Devin Reynolds, has been commissioned to create a new text-based dwork which engages explicitly and personally with the ocean. Citing the sea as his first and true love, Reynold’s paintings pull from his work as a commercial fisherman and years spent fishing and surfing. His lush paintings often include texts inspired by punk and hip-hop lyrics, hand-painted signage in his neighborhood, Ed Ruscha, old movie posters, vintage album art, graffiti, and flea market finds. While the realities of American segregation have bred a fraught relationship between communities of color and the ocean, in many of his recent works, Reynolds draws on ancestral knowledge and his personal experiences to paint the Black body back into a harmonious relationship with the ocean. This new work is a love letter to Los Angeles’ surrounding waters and the communities of people that both revel and work within them– it is an invitation to reflect on where we find ourselves within the context of the histories and mythologies of the ocean.

Devin Reynolds is a painter based in New Orleans. He received a BA in Architecture from Tulane University in 2017. Originally from Venice Beach, CA, Reynolds grew up working as a deckhand on The Betty O, a local sportfishing boat. He was raised between flea markets, yard sales, and the beach. His first encounters with art-making came in his early twenties in the form of graffiti. His obsession for graffiti took off when he began painting his assumed alias on the sides of freight cars that traverse the railroads of North America. Devin’s art practice finds itself at the intersection of graffiti and his love for nostalgic Americana design and sign painting, through the lense of his biracial upbringing in Los Angeles. In 2018, his work was featured in the solo exhibition Tyrone Don’t Surf at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans. He has exhibited in group exhibitions at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York; Core Gallery, New Orleans; The Chamber, Tacoma, WA; UNO Gallery St. Claude, New Orleans; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, where he was awarded “Best in Show” in Louisiana Contemporary (2017). In 2018, he was awarded an Early Art Practitioners Residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.