Tony de los Reyes's entire new show at Howard House, of paintings and this table sculpture, is based on Moby Dick.

In a talk Saturday at the gallery, de los Reyes described the sad story of Melville's rejection by the public and most of the critics for Moby Dick. He said that the NYT misspelled Melville's name in its already extremely short obit when the author died in 1891. I was curious about how it was misspelled, so I looked it up this morning. Looks like they didn't misspell Melville, they misspelled Moby Dick: Mobie Dick, they wrote (you have to open the PDF and scroll down).

The LA artist's new work is gothic and, much like the newly opened The Old, Weird America at the Frye, obsessed with the history and future of what it means to be American. In this sculpture/table, which looks prepared to walk away given those spindly legs, a skull rises from the terrible, gorgeous waves. The table is large and this picture doesn't do it much justice. Go to the gallery; the paintings need to be seen in person, too.

Here's one with an Eva Hesse reference (click to enlarge)...

(The process there is that the ship is painted in ink on unprimed linen, then the linen is primed and the oil paint—those Hesse skeins—is painted on top.)

More to come on the other show at the gallery, of paintings by Seattle's Matthew Offenbacher.