Reverie in Red, 9th till 22nd April at The Alchemy Experiment, Glasgow (exhibition review)

To say David Breen’s exhibition is ‘nostalgic for a time that never existed’ would be to use an overworn phrase that describes a certain unnamable beauty. But this is exactly how Breen’s method of painting matches its message, and so the phrase is warranted. 

In ‘Reverie in Red’ visual artist David Breen, also known by his street art moniker Pizza Boy, steps into the gallery and tempts us all to join him with an urban pop-art aesthetic that makes you long for the days Pulp Fiction was showing in theatres.

Breen’s modest selection of paintings align the walls of popular Glasgow west end café The Alchemy Experiment. They combine graphic elements of text with oil and screen printing. ‘Reverie in Red’ fulfills its promise of colour, reinforcing a cinematic motif that exudes an air of noir 80s Americana. The artist paints that familiar feeling using images of roadside motels, pay phones, and auto repair stores. The piece ‘Cult Classic’ is so loud it verges on parodic, but is saved when we remember its context as part of a mysterious past.

The video installation downstairs is a tableau of that era of cinema. Accompanied by a classic smooth jazz tune, and flanked by the exhibition’s title, the room is filled with nearly-recognizable clips of various films. We see the Vegas Strip, a cherry pie from Twin Peaks, a young Nicolas Cage, bits of early Tarantino, cigarettes, dice, and petrol-fueled explosions. 

The installation makes the viewer pine for a hackneyed genre of film that might be considered cheap or shallow if it appeared in theatres today.

The images that compose ‘Reverie in Red’ are those that flash through the mind of a hard-boiled noir detective as he smokes his cigarette, contemplating a case that just doesn’t add up. 

Meanwhile, the trope of the femme fatale appears everywhere, his thoughts draped in her red dress. The reverie that Breen wants us to experience is the one that seduces us all towards the past. It entices us away from the truth of the present, back to a time that may not have made sense then, but seems to know that it’s all over.

Reverie in Red, 9th till 22nd April at The Alchemy Experiment, Glasgow