Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to present Trees, the first exhibition at the gallery by Lucas Reiner. The exhibition brings together work drawn from Reiner’s sustained observation of curbside trees and the formal tensions that shape them.
In these paintings, Reiner turns his attention to street trees, who are visually transformed by the ongoing demands of their surroundings. Discovered while driving, these trees became a subject of both formal and metaphorical interest. Set against smoggy, neutralized backgrounds and removed from their surrounding context, they appear as singular presences—quiet, resilient, and deeply observed.
For Reiner, these trees function as a form of portraiture, shaped by the tension between growth and constraint. Their radically trimmed forms reveal not only the visible effects of urban regulation, but also nature’s persistent effort to endure. By isolating these subjects from their environment, Reiner draws attention to the unseen forces that have shaped them—physical, social, and historical.
Painting, for Reiner, operates under a similar condition. It is an art form defined by limits: a finite space, a fixed surface, material constraint. And yet within those restrictions, painting continually exceeds itself. This interplay between limitation and transcendence reflects, for Reiner, the comic-tragic conditions of human life. In these works, the ordinary becomes extraordinary through attention, structure, and vision.
Reiner is a Los Angeles and Berlin based artist, who has exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide since 1995. His work is included in permanent collections at home and abroad, such as LACMA, the West Collection, Oaks PA, the Santa Barbara Museum, CA, the Jumex La Coleccion, Mexico City, the Staatlichen Graphische Sammlung, Munich, Germany among others.
For additional information or visual material please contact the gallery by email at
gallery@vonlintel.com.
