David Reed's“Terrible Idea” Showcases Five Decades Of Abstract Painting

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Artist David Reed, 80, is presenting his latest exhibition,“Terrible Idea,” at Rodder gallery in New York through October 24. The show primarily focuses on Reed's work from the last decade, while also referencing his five-decade career and recurring artistic explorations.

Curated by Felix Rödder, who opened the Upper East Side gallery in 2025, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see Reed's experimental studies alongside his finished paintings. Reed, known for his dedication to the“struggle” inherent in his creative process, views his studies not merely as preparatory steps, but as intricate guides to the relationships between his art, his collaborators, and his diverse influences.

Reed's meticulous planning includes research, color studies, note-taking, and revisions, despite his works often appearing spontaneous. An example from 2018, Color Study #11, features marginal comments written by the artist over several months, followed by retroactive self-criticism, including“NO” and“TERRIBLE IDEA.” This measured self-critique is central to the exhibition's theme.

“The notes are really done afterwards, and they're about the surprises, the discoveries that I make,” Reed stated, describing the“diaristic” nature of these studies as his motivation to finally exhibit them. He added,“I think some of this is my most important work rather than the larger paintings. It shows my unique perspective about both gesture and the history of painting.”

Rödder emphasized the significance of these pieces:“We really wanted to highlight the objecthood of these individual works, so that they are not seen as mere studies, but really as working drawings that deserve acknowledgment and recognition by themselves.”

Reed developed his metatextual approach to abstraction at the New York Studio School in the late 1960s, supported by a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. After an initial period focusing on the American Southwest landscape, he achieved recognition with his 1975“Brushstrokes” series, characterized by horizontal lines on slender rectangular canvases. Over the years, Reed has expanded his technique to include gestural swooshes, dribbles, and calligraphic dollops, using acrylic and alkyd paints in carefully selected color combinations.

The exhibition highlights Reed's deliberate engagement with art history, drawing parallels to Renaissance and Rococo artists such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Andrea del Sarto. One color study even incorporates a cutout from Tintoretto's 1588 painting The Apparition of St. Roch on graph paper, analyzing its Doric forms and splashes of geranium and crimson. Rödder remarked,“I don't know anyone as knowledgeable about Renaissance Italian painting.”

Reed also acknowledges the influence of the late abstract painter Mary Heilmann, a longtime friend and colleague with whom he had a dual exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof in 2015.“I learned from Mary's ideas about social color,” Reed said, referring to how subtle color changes can evoke relationships and sentiments, transforming a red, yellow, and blue juxtaposition from Mondrian's realm to something as everyday as Wonder Bread. He noted,“She had a kind of freedom of casual gesture, My gesture is out of control.”

New techniques are also featured in the larger works in the show, including the use of stencils designed to mimic dripping paint, alongside his signature brushstrokes. In the past four years, Reed has embraced the square canvas, finding an unexpected expansiveness in a shape he once considered restrictive.“They're practical, too,” the artist quipped,“They can fit in a more domestic setting and still be big paintings.”

Despite his humor, the exhibition underscores Reed's focus on fundamental relationships.“I like an expansiveness of content,” Reed stated,“The painting isn't confined to just what's on the painting. The painting's nothing by itself. It absorbs everything around it.”

Source: Cultured Magazine

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