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Next Big Thing: Kevin Reinhardt

The California artist’s incredible “blind paintings” combine conceptual rigor and three-dimensional tonality

By Jacoba Urist
Art gallery with colorful paintings on white walls and a sculpture of a human head on a wooden pedestal in the foreground.

Conjuring childhood days spent at his parents’ accounting office, where he passed the time studying the venetian blinds, Kevin Reinhardt’s “blind paintings” are perfect combinations of conceptual rigor and three-dimensional tonality.

Person sitting on a chair in a casual setting, wearing a green shirt and jeans, with artwork in the background.
The artist in front of his 2023 work Laurie Mallet House, 3rd Floor. Photo: EVAN BEDFORD

Despite the repetitive formality of this body of work, the Culver City, California, artist describes how every canvas encapsulates a uniquely liminal realm. “I sew colored thread into my paintings to illustrate the lines of the blinds’ drawstrings and exaggerate their edges,” says Reinhardt, who had a buzzy solo debut with his gallery 56 Henry last fall. “At the risk of overdramatizing, the windows become a sort of purgatory, between inside and outside.”

Yellow and brown abstract geometric artwork hanging on a white wall.
Kevin Reinhardt, Red-Yellow House d, Bedroom, (2022). Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Abstract artwork with horizontal brown and yellow stripes and geometric shapes, featuring a prominent vertical yellow line.
Detail of Kevin Reinhard’s Red-Yellow House d, Bedroom, (2022). Photo: Courtesy of the artist

“Kevin carries a tradition of California modernist painting with such mastery. The way he sees, distills, and abstracts common, everyday subjects is done with an extremely deft hand”

Billy Cotton

Abstract art piece with a vibrant yellow panel on the left and a textured blue panel with lines on the right.
Kevin Reinhardt, Red-Yellow House d, Bedroom, (2022). Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Blue horizontal window blinds with sunlight highlighting the edges, creating a pattern of lines and shadows.
Detail of Kevin Reinhardt’s Red-Yellow House d, Bedroom, (2022). Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Creative flow: “I do my best not to play favorites with materials,” says Reinhardt of his sculptural practice, which spans everything from carved wood and steel to stacked paper shaped with an X-Acto knife. “My goal is to look at materials as objectively as possible and figure out what they’re good at and work strategically within that framework. This hopefully allows me to use mediums in ways that are honest to the material.” 

Pink sculpture of a bearded man with glasses and a lit cigarette, displayed on a wooden pedestal.
Kevin Reinhardt, We Will Meet Again, 1979 (Red), (2020). Photo: Courtesy of the artist

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2023 Winter Issue under the headline “Next Big Things.” Subscribe to the magazine.

Click here to see the full list of “Next Big Things.”