C. E. B. REAS (b. 1972, United States) lives and works in Los Angeles. His software, prints, and installations have has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
REAS' ongoing Process series explores the relationship between naturally evolved systems and those that are synthetic. The imagery evokes transformation, and visualizes systems in motion and at rest. Equally embracing the qualitative human perception and the quantitative rules that define digital culture, organic form emerges from precise mechanical structures.
REAS is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a masters degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences as well as a bachelors degree from the School of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. With Ben Fry, REAS initiated Processing in 2001. Processing is an open source programming language and environment for creating images, animation, and interaction.
REAS and Fry published Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, a comprehensive introduction to programming within the context of visual media (MIT Press, 2007). This year, they are publishing Getting Started with Processing, a casual introduction to programming (O'Reilly, 2010). With Chandler McWilliams and Lust, REAS is publishing Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture (PAPress, 2010), a non-technical introduction to the history, theory, and practice of software in the arts.
Reas is the recipient of a 2008 Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts Fellowship (supported by the Rockefeller Foundation), a 2005 Golden Nica award from the Prix Ars Electronica, and he was included in the 2008 ArtReview Power 100. His images have been featured in various publications including The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Print, Eye, Technology Review, and Wired.
Solo, Two- and Three-Person Exhibitions
OPEN. Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. San Francisco, CA. 1 Oct - 18 Nov 2009. Exhibition of C.E.B. Reas, Camille Utterback, and Stamen. Debut of Surface, Network A, Network B, and a selection of prints and objects from the Process series.
Transfers and Actions: C.E.B. Reas and Ellie Harrison. Mejan Labs, Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Stockholm, Sweden. 15 Apr - 7 Jun 2009. Exhibited Process 18.
CODE and FORM: C.E.B. Reas & Marius Watz. Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Pittsburgh, PA. 7 Feb - 19 Apr 2009. Exhibited works from the Process series, curated by Golan Levin.
Process / Form. bitforms gallery. New York, NY. 6 Mar - 12 Apr 2008. Debut of new work from the Process series.