David Reed

Exhibited by Galerie Nathalie Obadia

Material Acrylic and oil on polyester

Dimensions 106.7 × 106.7 × 3.8 cm

Place of Creation USA

Price Price Upon Inquiry

Status Vetted

About the Work

David Reed’s oeuvre, developed over several decades, make of him one of the most influential abstract painters of his generation. Since the 1980s, the artist has examined ways to express the paradoxical duality that conjugates conceptual and emotional elements in his work. While the process of image-making is itself at the heart of his art, David Reed has also evolved toward a radically different practice: a type of “camouflage” painting, which has a quasi-photographic rendering. In his most recent canvases, the artist manipulates time as though to erase it. The clarity of the gesture, which once allowed the viewer’s eye to dissect his entire process, disappears. David Reed begins with mark-making, then he reworks it, which goes against previous indications. It is as though the artist were trying to turn back time. There is, in fact, a sense that David Reed’s latest works were created in an inverted timeline.

In several horizontal works, the structural order applied by the artist is coupled with intentional disorder, due to the numerous interruptions to the system. On the flat surface, the artist applies his chromatic palette in segmented divisions, marked by fine ribbons of contrasting colors. David Reed finds his inspiration in European painting, in particular Italian: he borrows the dramatic gesturalness from the Baroque, while also reflecting on the concept of cangiante or changing color. The latter is a painting mode dating back to the Italian Renaissance and it consists in the modeling of light using opposing hues, by working on the chromatic transitions and the contrast.

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