Andrew Reach at the Riffe gallery

Let's Get Digital is the show currently on display in the Riffe Gallery in downtown Columbus until July 8. It explores how current artists utilize technology and confront the issues technology raises in life and artmaking. There's a lot of good stuff there, so if you're in the area, check it out.

Featured prominently are the works of Cleveland area Andrew Reach. Big, colorful, clean and inviting, his work has a lot which would attract the interest of a painter. But even knowing the theme of the show, my disappointment upon realizing they were digital canvas prints was severe. The perfect flatness, the even sheen, and the perfection of all the curves and lines were all evidence an artist's hand were never even close to these works. What had at first seemed so interesting, so playful, died before my eyes. It just looked tacky.

Upon reading the placard explaining his work, I immediately felt like an asshole. Reach is physically impaired: he uses digital means to produce work he literally could not using traditional art techniques.

I'm a big proponent for the primacy of process and materiality in art. I like seeing the artist's journey in a work. Being able to reconstruct that journey through brush strokes, partially painted-over or scratched-out areas, or even just seeing how the paint naturally flowed over the canvass is one of the central joys I get from looking at art. The image is not just itself: it's a tour guide to its own history. Digital prints can't do this, and even if they do, it's artifice. Ultimately, I felt digital canvas prints were solely the realm of "fine art" prints of those tourist photos you can buy at art fairs in the summer.

But obviously this is not fair. Surely it should not be used to reject Reach's work out-of-hand. Digital is certainly a valid process for him. However, does that mean digital is only valid for those with no other choice? Is it some artistic slum populated only by cripples? Obviously not.

Ultimately, this experience hit home the idea that to approach art, you have to check your preconceptions and biases at the door. Art, all art - high, low, good, bad - needs to be approached on it's own terms. From my process-based idea, Reach's work absolutely fails. But I wasn't lying about its virtues. The pieces are friendly, playful and ultimately highly complex. The computer-aided perfection and use of the grid belie compositions which ultimately rely on Reach's artistic intuition. They are large enough to engulf you in their own world and explore their intricacies and surprises.

Reach's work is valid not because of any disability on his part but only because it works. While its format may suggest a more traditional painterly approach, those were not the themes it ultimately explore. I just had to check my expectations to enjoy it.