Scott Reeder USA, b. 1970

Scott Reeder is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan. Reeder views all aspects of contemporary artistic practice—including content, methods, mediums, materials, and artist biography—as useful tools with which to engage in cultural critique through his work.

Reeder is an aesthetic chameleon, deploying painting, bookmaking, sculpture, filmmaking, public performance, and the creation of consumer products in unexpected ways to achieve his conceptual ends. His works operate both as objects of fine art and as objects that scrutinize the field of fine art. Reeder’s work is self-aware, self-conscious, and does not take anything too seriously, especially itself, often even bordering on satire. Some infamous examples include his Cute Communists series (2007), which featured images of famous communist leaders painted with doll-like cuteness; his painting Cops Ascending a Staircase (2009) (a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s most famous work); and his series of spaghetti paintings, in which the silhouettes of various types of cooked and uncooked spaghetti are used as the basis for linear, abstract compositions.