User:Modfineart/JoeRees

Joe Rees is an American sculptor, video artist, and the founder of Target Video. He received his MFA from California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA in 1973. He was the first video artist to receive the San Francisco Art Institute's annual Adaline Kent Award in 1980.

Sculptures
Using neon as his primary material, Rees produced sculptures that drew upon minimalism, language, and everyday objects. Many of the sculptures were destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake; however, Rees has recently recreated a selection of the works, which were displayed in 2009 at Steven Wolf Fine Arts in San Francisco, CA.

Target Video
In 1977, Rees founded Target Video in San Francisco, California. Taking advantage of the hand held camera, Target Video captured some of the best live footage of the early punk and hardcore scene in San Francisco, filming bands such as Black Flag, Flipper, The Avengers, and The Screamers. Target Video also captured early performances of The Cramps, Iggy Pop, and the Talking Heads. Target Video was located at 678 S, Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, where the space was not only used as Target Video’s studio, but also as a performance and screening location. While still based in San Francisco, Rees traveled throughout the United States and Europe in the 1980s filming live shows. After the Target Video studio was severely damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, Rees moved to Reno, Nevada where he went on to pursue other work.

Recent attention has revived the impressive and priceless archive of Target Video. In 2008, the Getty Center included Rees' video work in the exhibition California Video. His films were also screened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles in the same year. More recently, a selection of his work with Target Video was shown at Steven Wolf Fine Arts and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA.