David Reed New “Paintings”

Peter Blum Gallery

This event has ended.

Peter Blum presents an exhibition New Paintings by David Reed. This is Reed’s first solo exhibition in New York since 2007.

“As the viewer looks at the painting, they are compelled to glance rapidly from left to right, re-imagining the process of the work’s production. The painting requires a kind of viewing distinct from the ‘all-at-once-ness’ of Modernist painting. Instead one could describe the spectator as compelled to scan the picture: the glance presupposed is that of the city-dweller, as though watching a car or a train pass by. There is also a more indirect association with the movement of film.”
- Stephen Moonie, “The Indiscipline of Painting”, Tate St. Ives, 2011

Extending along the entire Eastern wall of the gallery, from within reach of the windows overlooking 57th Street, to the wall in the back of the exhibition space, six paintings are hung in a horizontal line, adjacent to each other, nearly touching. The painting to the far right continues into the back office. Visitors can request that any of the paintings be removed from the line-up and placed on an empty wall to be viewed individually.

New components of these paintings, introduced since Reed last showed in New York, are brush-strokes painted using multiple layers of laser-cut stencils. These stencils are made from scans of brush marks from previous paintings that have been manipulated, both manually and digitally. Used as a scaffold, these multiple, layered and overlapping stencils allow for the creation of new possibilities: different colors, configurations, and croppings. Also included in the show is a large drawing from 1975 which exemplifies the kind of brush-stroke that can be transformed.

An extensive group of color studies and working drawings that document the artist’s working process accompany the show.

David Reed was born in 1946 in San Diego, California and lives and works in New York. Reed has exhibited internationally in numerous museums. His recent solo exhibitions include Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany (2015); Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany with Mary Heilmann (2015); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2012). His work is included in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Mumok, Vienna, Austria; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland among others. Recent group exhibitions include Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany and Jackson Pollock’s Mural: Energy Made Visible, Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany. Reed’s work was included in the 1975 and 1989 Whitney Biennial Exhibitions.