Elly Reitman Energy

Thinking About Power IV, 2024, Oil on panel

Untitled, 2024, Oil on canvas over panel

energy, installation view

Untitled, 2023, Oil on canvas over panel

Thinking About Power III (Mulberry, Pose, Sinus, Orbs), 2023, Oil on canvas over panel

energy, installation view

Portal, 2024, Oil on panel

Eights, 2024, Oil on canvas

U & I, 2024, Oil on canvas

Sky Stones II, 2024, Oi l on panel

Alignment, 2024, Oil on panel

energy, installation view

Blood, 2024, hematite

Energy
Elly Reitman
August 16 – September 20, 2024

I recently watched a drawing exercise that is only made possible with a partner. In this exercise, you rest the shoulder of your right arm against your collaborator's left. You may intertwine your arms, or hold them in close proximity. One person begins to draw while the other mirrors their marks. Watching this process, I began to understand that the two halves of the drawing aren't necessarily reflections of each other— one person can't perfectly mirror someone else.

I've always described the process of making a show with someone as a brief moment of stepping into the other half of their brain. It's a particularly intimate experience, one impossible without trust. I've found myself interested in exercises that get close to this sensation. Earlier this year, a friend led a group meditation based on mirroring a partner’s movements. Silently, one person begins to move as the other tries to match their gestures. It’s embarrassing, and requires completely letting go of self-consciousness. (Elly and I have agreed we are much better at being children now than when we were young). Eventually the group starts to oscillate between who is leading and who is following. It becomes nearly impossible to tell where the movement begins and where it ends.

These exercises embody an energy found in Elly Reitman’s work. Their paintings are a commitment to trust and unknowing. They possess a consciousness of the self without being so self-conscious. They arise from a sense of desire, a yearning that resonates from deep within the gut, outpours from the heart, and swirls around the mind. Though they often begin with an image, there is an innate sense of trust for what might emerge through the process.

Elly uses a universal yet entirely idiosyncratic understanding of signs and symbols to develop a tacit language for approaching their paintings. They are thinking about energy. The recurring image of a socket throughout the work could be seen as a meditation on power, resources, and the relationship between kinetic and potential energies. Ears offer a glimpse of the body, serving as a passageway for a whisper and a symbol for sound. Tongues elicit a sense of language and taste, a bridge between the inside and outside of the body, a letter: “U” & “I”. Even in the absence of a figure, the internal conditions of the body are made external on the surface of the work.

The paintings are always a psychic problem—an ache to make the unknown known, a misunderstanding of the relationship between figure and ground, a negotiation of the boundaries between “U” & “I”. Between You and I.

★★★

Elly Reitman (b. 1990) received a BFA from The Cooper Union, MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and diplomas in TCM Acupressure and Naturopathy at École Setsuko. Their work has been included in recent exhibitions at Joe Project, The Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, White Columns, Rumpelstilskin and ROMANCE. Reitman is an artist and bodyworker living as a guest on unceded Indigenous lands in Tioh’tià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal.

Audrey Gair
Rind

opening November 22, 2024

Phyllis Baldino, Max Guy & Ellie Rae Hunter
Outliners
October 4 - November 10, 2024

Elly Reitman
energy
August 16 - September 20, 2024

Michelle Grabner, Kathleen Morris & Bronson Smillie
The Weather, or some other accident, curated by Danica Pinteric
July 12 - July 29, 2024

Tiziana La Melia
Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster
June 7 - July 6, 2024

Jacob Jackmauh, Caitlin McCann & Benjamin Stallings
As for me, I’m just passing through this planet
March 8 - April 14, 2024

Irina Jasnowski Pascual
Wipers
September 15 - October 29, 2023

Coco Klockner
honesty
July 8 - August 6, 2023

Morgan Canavan, Ben Estes, Marisa Takal
More Coming Back & More Returning
May 5 - June 11, 2023

Sylvie Hayes-Wallace
Center of the Universe
August 5 - September 18, 2022

Amanda Horowitz
Bad Water, True West or Between Myself the Crickets and the Coyote
performed by Sophia Cleary and Ada Friedman
July 14 & July 15, 2022

Suzanna Zak
Coming Home to the Ice Age
opening May 13 - June 24, 2022

★

About
Instagram

★

open by appointment

located beside
320 E. Churchwell Ave
Knoxville, Tennessee

Michelle Grabner, Kathleen Morris & Bronson Smillie The Weather, or some other accident, curated by Danica PintericJuly 12 - July 29, 2024 Tiziana La Melia Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster June 7 - July 6, 2024

★ About Instagram ★open by appointment located beside320 E. Churchwell Ave Knoxville, Tennessee

Michelle Grabner, Kathleen Morris & Bronson Smillie
The Weather, or some other accident, curated by Danica Pinteric
July 12 - July 29, 2024

Tiziana La Melia
Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster
June 7 - July 6, 2024

★

About
Instagram

★

open by appointment

located beside
320 E. Churchwell Ave
Knoxville, Tennessee