«David Reed: Vice and Reflection – An Old Painting, New Paintings and Animations» 2016 was the title of the exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2016, for which the artist created a new series of works inspired by a painting titled «#212 (Vice)» from 1984-1985. Here, the highly saturated blues and yellows reflect the colors of 1980s popular culture, like in the television series Miami Vice. Reed created a reflection of this earlier painting for Miami in the form of new large-scale work that also references the scale and proportions of the museum gallery's architecture. With «#661», 2003-2013/ 2016 and «#659», 1975/ 1996-2000/ 2007-2011/ 2014-2015/ 2015-2016/2016 we are presenting striking works from this series. As relevant testimony in the artist's creative process, the meticulous «Working Drawings» and «Color Studies» accompanying the large-scale works document the artist's thought and work stages. A significant complex of works on paper and selected studies invite visitors to retrace this process in the gallery.David Reed, although raised on the West Coast, is inextricably linked to New York, where he has lived and worked since 1970. In search of a singular artistic expression, he created narrow vertical canvases between 1974 and 1975 using rapidly placed broad horizontal brushstrokes. «Wet on wet», Reed subsequently painted mainly black or red «Brushstrokes» from left to right, sometimes diagonally. Since the «Brushstroke Paintings» of the 1970s, he has repeatedly taken up this pictorial element and developed it into an essential instrument of his painting, as the more recent «Verticals» «#732-2», 2020 or «#742», 2020-2021 impressively demonstrate. Contrasting with these shades of gray or black are the latest paintings «#773», 2020-2023 and «#774», 2019-2023, from Reed's studio, for which he chose a color palette of vibrant yellows, reds and blues. David Reed challenges the viewer to explore different facets and shades of color and to discover minimally divergent gradations, color temperatures, and undertones. These intense contradictions account for Reed's great appeal and emotional impact.

The selected works in our exhibition illustrate how David Reed condenses his vocabulary, which has grown over the years, and has connected the three cities into multi-layered, abstract narratives. His work deals with the history and present of painting as a medium, in conjunction with the change in our perception in the digital age coupled with new emotional conditions.