Peder Lund

Preoccupied with reinventing the process of painting, David Reed (b. 1946- ) manipulates the forms and associations of the brushstroke to foreground an unresolved tension between the gestural and the systematic. Reed’s 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, the artist 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.

David 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. Reed 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 he arrived in New York 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.

Reed is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Roswell Museum and Art Center grant, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Ursula Blickle Foundation Art Award. His work has been exhibited widely in international institutions, among them the The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, NY (2019-2021); Neues Museum, Nuremberg, Germany (2019); Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2018); Perez Art Museum, Miami (2016); Museum für Gegenwart, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2015); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2012); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland (2001); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (1998); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (1995).