The Robin Rice Gallery announces “EIGHTEEN: A LOOK AT THE CULTURE THAT MOVES US,” an exhibition of photographs by Kim Reierson. An opening reception and signing for the accompanying book will be held on March 7th, 2007 from 5:30 to 8:30pm. The show runs through April 29th, 2007.

“EIGHTEEN” is Reierson’s visual documentation of, and homage to, one of America’s most often ignored yet vitally important subcultures: the trucker, the men and women who crisscross the country piloting their big eighteen wheeler rigs across vast, open landscapes, under the big blue skies of the USA.

For five years Reierson photographed these American heroes. She hung out at truck stops, traveled the highways with them, waking up in 20 different states. The resulting large-format images such as Chrome Hearts, an in-your-face, closely-cropped shot of the elaborate metal-encrusted front cab bodywork and tire rims of an neon- and moon-lit semi proudly on display in a busy truck stop parking lot, And Tigers, Bells, and Whistles, a view of the interior cab of a tricked-out rig, rendered in all of its intricate glory, recall the work of the photo-realist painters Richard Estes and John Salt in their focus on vivid color and their heightened sense of reality. Others such as Truck Tub Truck Wash (the invitational piece), wherein two workers hose down a massive rig, their bodies dwarfed by its immensity, and Have a Nice Day, a candid portrait of affable Trucker Tim Young proudly posing in his homey truck cabin, are poetic depictions of a community and culture in flux.

Long celebrated in song and on film, and currently all the rage on MTV-Style Television shows, the trucker, thanks to Hollywood, occupies an almost mythical spot in our imaginations. “Eighteen” invites us to consider and examine the nitty gritty, quotidian details of trucker life. “There are rhythms captured in Kim Reierson’s photographs,” as John Leland of the New York Times writes in his essay in the book’s foreword. They are “windows into lives that don’t often stop for visitors.”

Kim Rierson was born in California and raised in Bolivia. In 2000 she moved to New York City. After the events of 9/11 Reierson chose to drive not fly away from Manhattan. It was during this cross-country journey home to visit her mother that she became reacquainted and intrigued with the trucker lifestyle. The discovery would prove to be obvious to her. Reierson is the daughter of a trucker. These photographs are a catharsis, a way of experiencing the father she never really knew. This is Reierson’s second solo show. To view the exhibition, please visit http://www.robinricegallery.com.