Inside artist Lyle Reimer’s wild world

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In mixed media artist Lyle Reimer’s wild world, any material can have an artistic application if you’re experimental enough. The Vancouver-based creative studied makeup artistry before being catapulted to fame via his outré Instagram feed. LyleXOX, as he’s known on social media, uses found objects, textiles and other elements of debris in the fantastical facial sculptures that augment his cosmetic creations.

“One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to be open to listening to your inner creative voice,” Reimer says, reflecting on the trajectory that took him from working at M.A.C Cosmetics to being the subject of a Rizzoli book about his absurdist oeuvre. “When you really tune into that, it keeps you on a path that is authentic.” Through his resolve and resourcefulness, Reimer has collaborated with the likes of Moschino, Viktor & Rolf and Bergdorf Goodman.

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A clown enthusiast as a child – his first bike was a unicycle – Reimer recalls that his earliest artistic endeavours were creating crafts with his mother, and that he was always struck by her uncanny ability to transform a simple egg carton into something like a peacock. Since then, Reimer himself has used everything from magazine clippings of Prada runway models and rotary telephone parts to burned-out lightbulbs and Bottega Veneta shopping bags in his ramshackle-chic works. One sculpture was composed of different discarded ballet accessories, such as a pointe shoe a friend found on the side of the road, and he delights in dreaming about the journey such items take to becoming immortalized in his practice.

In 2024, three of Reimer’s sculptures were included in an exhibition that was co-directed by filmmaker Luca Guadagnino during the Venice Biennale . After years of exhibiting via social media and photography shows, it was the first time that Reimer’s work was displayed in such a way. The exhibition, titled Homo Faber, was an examination of the evolution of material use and a “celebration of craft” as Reimer describes it. He says such showcases are so valuable at a time when artificially generated art is being produced at breakneck speed.

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“I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had to have the conversation about AI,” he says, emphasizing the disbelief many viewers have when taking in his elaborate portraits. “I make each sculpture out of found objects and recycled garbage. I do my own makeup. I photograph myself. Nothing is the result of computer manipulation. If you zoom in on certain images, you can even see where the residue of glue was on my fingers. I think that’s what makes things beautiful – that imperfection.”

An ethos of embracing the ephemeral is at the core of all the pieces Reimer produces, for both aesthetic and advocacy purposes. “Using found materials and ‘garbage’ has really caused me to think about how we place value on things and people, and how we also remove value,” he says. “I want the work to cause people to have conversations about carbon footprints, and I want people to learn to look at things that we might see as mundane objects and appreciate them more.”