Shortly before a group of David Reed’s paintings were transported to Paris for Whirlpool, his debut exhibition at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, which continues through October 26, I visited his New York studio. Earlier that day, we had lunch and reminisced about the circumstances that led me to his 1975 debut exhibition in New York, at Susan Caldwell Gallery. The writer Paul Auster’s sister, Janet, introduced me to Reed’s art while I was a student at Bard from 1969 to 1972.
As David and I viewed and discussed the paintings in his studio, the subject of time passing and mortality emerged and then receded, but it did not disappear completely. At times, David wrote down something I said. This reminded me of his drawings, each of which is a diary of how he creates his paintings, all the thoughts and decisions that occur. In an interview that I conducted with David in March of 2010, he explained his process with his drawings and paintings:
There’s a record, of course, in these drawings of what I’ve tried that didn’t work. Decisions that were eliminated or sanded off. But sometimes these bad decisions lead to another decision that I would have never thought of, if I hadn’t made all those mistakes. […] My paintings are about process but hide the process.
In The Sight of Death, the art historian, T.J. Clark records his observations of looking at two Nicolas Poussin paintings at the Getty Center in Los Angeles on a near-daily basis: “Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake” (1648) and “Landscape with a Calm”(1650–51). Reed’s paintings reminded me of two points Clark makes. First, he states that “there is no clear boundary line between ignorance and knowledge” — between knowing and not knowing. Second, he asks viewers to think “about why some visual configurations are harder to put into words than others. And about whether there is an ethical, or even political, point to that elusiveness.”
I have been looking at Reed’s paintings for nearly 50 years. During that time, I have interviewed him, reviewed his exhibitions, and written essays on his work for both gallery and museum publications. And yet there I was, studying these artworks in his studio, wondering whether I could see them for what they are.
I asked myself if I should keep a diary of all the thoughts that came to mind as I stood face to face with Reed’s paintings. Or is my task to delineate the differences between these new works and those in his last show, to determine whether he has made artistic progress?
In a January 2020 review, this is how I described the large painting “709 (For Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan)” (2005–9/2018–19):
[T]here is a series of mauve, semi-transparent, gestural marks, overlaid by solid green gestural marks, overlaid by their ghostly twins, which seem to exist in a distant, filmy dimension. There are also a few dribbles and splatters of paint. Looking at and into the painting, we feel as if we are moving from the physical world of palpable marks into an ethereal one that exists behind a screen. But, contrary to what we might expect, Reed articulates this digital-like world solely through paint.
I did not elaborate on the “dribbles and splatters.” As I spent time with the recent paintings, I thought: Can we simultaneously look and see? Or do we need to look again to begin to see? The longer I sat with the art, the more I felt that I wasn’t fully seeing what was there.
A David Reed painting is recognizable from a long distance. They can feel like old friends: You want to know how they are and, in a profound sense, who they are. How have they changed since you last saw them? What news do they bring you this time around? Those you have not encountered before require you to put aside your assumptions about what the artist is up to.
I realized this while looking at “#792” (2023–24). The work is a visual paradox that cannot be resolved. Like the moon, it resists elucidation even as it invites inquiry: You can discover what it is made of, but its existence encompasses more than its formal properties.
The 30-by-60-inch work is divided into solid warm gray sections and areas containing tongue-like forms, volumetric streaks, and splatters, painted an undulating electric green that gradates from dark to light. It is as if each mark is lit by an unseen light source. The cool white ground behind the green gestures reads like a flat and open space that is neither infinite nor measurable.
Reed’s compositional deftness is understated but everywhere present. Three large, overlapping green forms on the right side prevent the eye from sliding out of the picture plane, and compel us to look both at and into the painting. The splatters bring to mind the busyness of nature, how the world is never still, even if we don’t see, hear, or feel it. And yet, even as I come to this place, I know I am wrong. The piece is not about any of this, at least not directly.
While many critics, including myself, have associated Reed’s paintings with the digital age and computer screens, the experience of looking through a microscope or telescope also comes to mind.
While the large, arcing green streaks that mirror each other in the upper and lower parts of “793” (2023–24) command attention, open and closed streaks, splatters, and drips in black and deep blue on the yellow ground create a whirling visual buzz. I am reminded of the poet Tennyson’s phrase, “the noise of life.”
Reed’s interest in the optical and Op Art, the brushstroke, the indirect and direct, Baroque art, and the fleshly folds of drapery cannot be sorted out in any simple way. In #767 (2022–24), a single, stylized brushstroke, derived from a stencil, is set against a white ground with blue streaks that is coloristically separate from the rest of the yellow and green painting. The brushstroke describes nothing but its own isolated existence. Why do I feel like it is a specimen?
In contrast, I see two different worlds when I look at the deep blue brushstroke hovering atop the blackish ground covered with folded red forms in “#795” (2023–24). The blue is isolated from the world beyond it, neither one reacting to the other.
These paintings make me think about how the color works differently in each one, how Reed’s interest in opticality has never hardened into a graphic style. In this regard, he hasn’t just absorbed aspects of Op Art and Color Field painting; he has gone beyond them. The territory that Reed has opened up for himself over the course of his long career is dense and rich. Different types of looking — at a surface, out a window, and on a screen — are integral to his work. I think it is time we acknowledge Reed’s greatness.
