Artists

David Reed

Press release

Galerie Nathalie Obadia is delighted to present Whirlpool, the first solo exhibition of the American artist David Reed at its gallery in Paris. Born in 1946 in San Diego, California, Reed has lived and worked in New York since 1966. After attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine, and Reed College in Portland, Oregon, he continued his studies under the tuition of Milton Resnick and Mercedes Matter at the New York Studio School, where he also took part in a seminar directed by Philip Guston.

While the New York School did have an influence on Reed, it was the emphasis on process and physicality in the work of such artists as Richard Serra and Barry Le Va that enabled him to transcend the prevailing approach to painting in the United States at the time¹. Reed feels that the particular potential of painting lies in its ability to remain open to other media. Minimalist sculpture, photography, and cinema-notably the flicker films of Paul Sharits, with their colorimetry and optical effects-were among his early influences. Throughout a prolific career spanning more than sixty years, he has developed a body of work in which process, light, and color play a pivotal role. Galerie Nathalie Obadia exhibition brings together a series of recent paintings that exemplify Reed's latest thoughts on the notion of "optical color" in painting.