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Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975

Curated by Katy Siegel and Christopher Wool

January 17–February 25, 2017
980 Madison Avenue, New York

Installation view Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view

Artwork © 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation video Play Button

Installation video

Works Exhibited

David Reed, #90, 1975 Oil on canvas, 76 × 56 inches (193 × 142.2 cm)Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift of Elizabeth Richebourg Rea, in memory of Michal M. Rea© 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

David Reed, #90, 1975

Oil on canvas, 76 × 56 inches (193 × 142.2 cm)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift of Elizabeth Richebourg Rea, in memory of Michal M. Rea
© 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

David Reed, #46, 1974 Oil on canvas, 76 × 23 inches (193 × 58.4 cm)Wolfgang and Christa Häusler Collection, Munich© 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

David Reed, #46, 1974

Oil on canvas, 76 × 23 inches (193 × 58.4 cm)
Wolfgang and Christa Häusler Collection, Munich
© 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

David Reed, #49, 1974 Oil on canvas, 76 × 44 inches (193 × 111.8 cm)Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Gift of David Reed© 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

David Reed, #49, 1974

Oil on canvas, 76 × 44 inches (193 × 111.8 cm)
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Gift of David Reed
© 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

David Reed, #64, 1974 Oil on canvas, 76 × 56 inches (193 × 142 cm)Sammlung Goetz, Munich© 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

David Reed, #64, 1974

Oil on canvas, 76 × 56 inches (193 × 142 cm)
Sammlung Goetz, Munich
© 2017 David Reed/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Barry Le Va, On Center Shatter—or—Shatterscatter (within the Series of Layered Pattern Acts), 1968–71 Five glass panes, installation dimensions variable; overall: 2 ¾ × 57 × 72 ¾ inches (7 × 145 × 185 cm)Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, formerly Collection Rolf Ricke (acquired by Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main in 2007)© 2017 Barry Le Va. Photo: Rob McKeever

Barry Le Va, On Center Shatter—or—Shatterscatter (within the Series of Layered Pattern Acts), 1968–71

Five glass panes, installation dimensions variable; overall: 2 ¾ × 57 × 72 ¾ inches (7 × 145 × 185 cm)
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, formerly Collection Rolf Ricke (acquired by Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main in 2007)
© 2017 Barry Le Va. Photo: Rob McKeever

James Nares, Pendulum, 1976 (still) Super 8 film, black and white, sound, 17 minutes© James Nares, courtesy the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery

James Nares, Pendulum, 1976 (still)

Super 8 film, black and white, sound, 17 minutes
© James Nares, courtesy the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery

Sigmar Polke, Streifenbild IV (Stripe painting IV), 1968 Acrylic on canvas, 59 × 49 ¼ inches (149.9 × 125.1 cm)Kravis Collection© 2017 The Estate of Sigmar Polke, Cologne/ARS, New York/VG Bild-­Kunst, Bonn

Sigmar Polke, Streifenbild IV (Stripe painting IV), 1968

Acrylic on canvas, 59 × 49 ¼ inches (149.9 × 125.1 cm)
Kravis Collection
© 2017 The Estate of Sigmar Polke, Cologne/ARS, New York/VG Bild-­Kunst, Bonn

About

Everyone on the edge of the Grand Canyon was afraid his neighbor, his friend, would jump. I liked to imagine jumping. I ran for the edge, vaulted the guard rail, flung myself into space, feet first, sleeves flapping.
—David Reed

Gagosian New York is pleased to present an exhibition of early brushmark paintings by David Reed. Curated by Katy Siegel and Christopher Wool, this presentation follows the exhibition’s premiere at the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. This is Reed’s first exhibition with the gallery.

Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975 reunites many canvases first shown in 1975 at Susan Caldwell Gallery, New York, which had a strong impact on Christopher Wool, then a young artist. More than forty years later, Reed’s paintings are complemented by a group exhibition of artists who were similarly exploring the relationship between process and image-making in painting, sculpture, photography, and film.

When Reed came to New York from Southern California in the 1960s, he entered an art world that was skeptical about painting’s ability to be forward-looking. The young artist sympathized with the humanist, even metaphysical current in the work of painters like his teachers Philip Guston and Milton Resnick, even as he admired the deadpan materiality of contemporaneous experiments in sculpture and film. Seeking to make paintings that were as direct as a poured-steel sculpture, between 1974 and 1975 he prepared tall, vertical canvases, either as single panels or as many as five panels bolted together; the height of the canvases was determined by the door to his studio, the widths by the limit of his own reach. Working wet into wet, Reed then painted primarily black or red strokes from left to right, top to bottom, and sometimes diagonally, quickly filling the canvas.

Read more

Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975

Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975

In this video, Christopher Wool, Katy Siegel, and David Reed discuss Reed’s paintings and memories of the New York arts scene in 1975.

New York, 1975

New York, 1975

Katy Siegel and Christopher Wool discuss David Reed’s paintings and the New York art scene in 1975.

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol at Paris Apartment Window, 1981

In Conversation
Christopher Makos and Jessica Beck

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade is a group exhibition and shop takeover that feature works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators including photographers Ronnie Cutrone, Michael Halsband, Christopher Makos, and Billy Name. To celebrate the occasion, Makos met with Gagosian director Jessica Beck to speak about his friendship with Warhol and the joy of the unexpected.

Jessica Beck

Andy Warhol: Silver Screen

In this video, Jessica Beck, director at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, sits down to discuss the three early paintings by Andy Warhol from 1963 featured in the exhibition Andy Warhol: Silver Screen, at Gagosian in Paris.

Image of Cy Twombly's Treatise on the Veil (Second Version), 1970

Cy Twombly: Imperfect Paradise

Eleonora Di Erasmo, cocurator of Un/veiled: Cy Twombly, Music, Inspirations, a program of concerts, video screenings, and works by Cy Twombly at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome, reflects on the resonances and networks of inspiration between the artist and music. The program was the result of an extensive three-year study, done at the behest of Nicola Del Roscio in the Rome and Gaeta offices of the Cy Twombly Foundation, intended to collect, document, and preserve compositions by musicians around the world who have been inspired by Twombly’s work, or to establish an artistic dialogue with them.

Black and white image of the interior of Cy Twombly’s apartment in Rome

Cy Twombly: Making Past Present

In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, announced their plan for a survey of Cy Twombly’s artwork alongside selections from their permanent ancient Greek and Roman collection. The survey was postponed due to the lockdowns necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, but was revived in 2022 with a presentation at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from August 2 through October 30. In 2023, the exhibition will arrive at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The curator for the exhibition, Christine Kondoleon, and Kate Nesin, author of Cy Twombly’s Things (2014) and advisor for the show, speak with Gagosian director Mark Francis about the origin of the exhibition and the aesthetic and poetic resonances that give the show its title: Making Past Present.