About
Preoccupied with reinventing the process of painting, David Reed manipulates the forms and associations of the brushstroke to foreground an unresolved tension between the gestural and the systematic. His current work is characterized by fluid marks that reveal the viscosity of paint and the shifting of color in a deliberately flattened manner that can appear almost photographic. Sometimes employing extremely elongated formats, he makes concurrent reference to the mechanics of cinema, linking his work to the culture at large while remaining focused on the dynamics of a painterly practice that resists formalism.
Reed was born in San Diego in 1946. His aunt and uncle, Rosemary and O. P. Reed, and his great-uncle August Biehle were all painters. (Also a gallerist, O. P. worked with the artist John McLaughlin [1898–1976], an early influence on Reed.) He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine, and Reed College in Portland, Oregon, graduating from the latter with a BA in 1968. In 1966 Reed arrived in New York (where he still lives) on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, studying at the New York Studio School under the tutelage of Mercedes Matter and Milton Resnick, and attending a seminar led by Philip Guston. At the school he experienced a continued reverence for gestural mark making while knowing that many artists outside the school were skeptical not only of mark making, but also of the ongoing currency of painting itself.
Sympathetic to the humanist impulses that underpinned these opposing attitudes, Reed sought to reconcile gestural mark making with the systematic approach of contemporaneous Conceptual art, the material processes of Minimalist sculpture, and the deadpan visuality of experimental filmmaking. Between 1974 and 1975 he produced a succession of tall abstract canvases marked with primarily black or red strokes painted, wet-into-wet, from left to right, top to bottom, and sometimes diagonally. The works take the form of single and conjoined canvases, with their height determined by that of Reed’s studio door and their width by the limits of his reach.
#DavidReed
Website
Exhibitions
Game Changer
Mercedes Matter
Lauren Mahony and Michael Tcheyan pay homage to the founder of the New York Studio School.
David Reed
David Reed and Katharina Grosse met at Reed’s New York studio in the fall of 2019 to talk about his newest paintings, the temporal aspects of both artists’ practice, and some of their mutual inspirations.
Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975
In this video, Christopher Wool, Katy Siegel, and David Reed discuss Reed’s paintings and memories of the New York arts scene in 1975.
New York, 1975
Katy Siegel and Christopher Wool discuss David Reed’s paintings and the New York art scene in 1975.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Visit
Art Weekend Basel
David Reed: Losing and Finding
April 2–3, 2022, 11am–6pm
Basel
www.artweekendbasel.ch
Gagosien is participating in the second edition of Art Weekend Basel. Organized by Weiss + Falk Gallery and Galerie Mueller, the event brings together twelve of the city’s leading galleries, which will be open for extended hours over the weekend. The exhibition David Reed: Losing and Finding—featuring new and recent paintings by the artist—will be on view at Gagosien, Basel.
David Reed, #747, 2020–22 © 2022 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever
In Conversation
New Social Environment
Ode to Willem de Kooning
Saturday, March 19, 2022, 4pm EDT
As part of the Brooklyn Rail’s online series New Social Environment, John Elderfield, Joan Levy Hepburn, David Reed, Richard Shiff, Mark Stevens, Robert Storr, Charles Stuckey, Annalyn Swan, Flora Yukhnovich, and Phong H. Bui will be in conversation to celebrate the life and work of Willem de Kooning on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. De Kooning Foundation executive director Amy Schichtel will introduce the discussion. To join the online event, register at brooklynrail.org.
Willem de Kooning in his studio, East Hampton, New York, 1971. Artwork © 2022 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo: © 2022 The Estate of Dan Budnik. All rights reserved
In Conversation
New Social Environment
Mattress World: Guy Goodwin and David Reed
Tuesday, September 14, 2021, 1pm EDT
As part of the Brooklyn Rail’s online series New Social Environment, David Reed and fellow artist Guy Goodwin join the journal’s editor-at-large Charlotte Kent for a conversation about Goodwin’s current exhibition, curated by Reed. In these daily lunchtime Zoom conversations, invited artists, writers, filmmakers, and poets discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality with Brooklyn Rail staff, followed by a question-and-answer session. The talk will conclude with a poetry reading by Andrea Abi-Karam. To join the online event, register at brooklynrail.org.
Installation view, Guy Goodwin: Mattress World, Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York, May 1–October 23, 2021. Artwork © Guy Goodwin
Museum Exhibitions
Closed
David Reed in
Given Time
September 8, 2022–February 25, 2023
Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York
www.resnickpasslof.org
This group exhibition has a starting point in 1991 when Molly Sullivan curated the exhibition Contemporary Abstract Painting: Resnick, Reed, Laufer & Moore for the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Her show referenced the tumult of the 1980s art market, the continuing debate over the future of painting, and the impact of the political arena in which artists live. Given Time expands on that exhibition to include artists from a broad spectrum of personal and political influences, as it considers the interim three decades from the Muscarelle show to our present day through a number of lenses. Work by David Reed is included.
David Reed, #662, 2013–17 © 2022 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Marking Time
Process in Minimal Abstraction
December 18, 2019–August 2, 2020
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
www.guggenheim.org
During the 1960s and 1970s, many artists working with abstraction rid their styles of compositional, chromatic, and virtuosic flourishes. As some turned toward such minimal approaches, a singular emphasis on their interaction with materials emerged. The resulting pieces invite viewers to imaginatively reenact aspects of the creative process. Featuring paintings and works on paper, Marking Time explores how drawing attention to the creative process fosters a distinctively empathetic mode of engagement. Work by Brice Marden and David Reed is included.
Installation view, Marking Time: Process in Minimal Abstraction, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, December 18, 2019–August 2, 2020. Artwork, left to right: © 2020 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Park Seo-Bo; © Chryssa; © 2020 Jacob El Hanani; © 2020 Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Closed
David Reed
Vice and Reflection #2
July 12–October 6, 2019
Neues Museum, Nuremberg, Germany
www.nmn.de
This exhibition offers insight into David Reed’s current painting practice by bringing five important works together with corresponding drawings.
David Reed, #660-2 (Vice and Reflection), 2016/19 (detail) © 2019 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Frozen Gesture
Gesten in der Malerei
May 18–August 18, 2019
Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland
www.kmw.ch
In 1965 Roy Lichtenstein created his famous Brushstrokes and in doing so highlighted the fundamental elements of the image, such as the appearance of the colors and the pigment, the color fields and their limits, and not least the application of paint in the form of a gesture. This exhibition aims to explore the sheer range of gestures in contemporary painting. Work by Katharina Grosse, Roy Lichtenstein, and David Reed is included.
Katharina Grosse, Untitled, 2011 © Katharina Grosse and VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2019