Artist Bio

Theadis Reagins creates paintings and prints of congregating figures and rhetorical figures mediating between mundane and symbolic space. Reagins works in a mode of convicted investigation, exploring social phenomena with poise and non-linear structure. Reagins is currently a student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he is expected to earn a BFA in 2026. In 2022, he was the recipient of the Eterovich Award, given his contribution to the Slow hand exhibition at Yards Projects in Cleveland, Ohio. He was also awarded the Charles Salle award in 2023. Theadis Reagins hosted his first solo show More Gifts at Deep Dive Arts Projects in 2023. He has also been included in group exhibitions at The Morgan Conservatory, Zygote Press, Kent State University, Ashtabula Art Center, and Cuyahoga Valley National Park. In 2024, Reagins exhibited at Prizm Art Fair in Miami, Florida for the group show The Architecture of Liberation. 

Artist statement

I create doorways that invite both introspection and critical reflection. Through a post-soul sensibility, I create revisionist histories that highlight the irony in contemporary experience. Ranging from small to large scale, I compose accordingly with full figures animating space, series of portraits with recurring motifs, and cropped squares of juxtaposed tropes. Through the use of figure and symbol, the mundane becomes arresting and the mythological a vast network of associations.Laborers, congregations, and family matter grace the surfaces and point to a more eternal truth with the guise of uniformity. I take inspiration from sports, biographical detail, the African Diaspora, and the everyday. Together, my work visualizes the interior and exterior of humans through intensity and tension. I use archetypes of art history to animate images of presence and absence, and of consumption and cultural production. Through these material renderings I aim to activate the subconscious of what it already knows and to create a permeation in which one can pass through indefinitely.