Early David Reed at Gagosian

The works by David Reed from the 1970s are at display in Los Angeles. As David Pagel states:

Reed set out to make paintings that had no illusions about their place in the world. Or any delusions about their role in getting people to make sense of our surroundings and our place in them.

He stretched canvases that were the size of the door to his Tribeca studio. He bought paint by the gallon in colors too ugly for houses. Then he got down to business, brushing, pouring and scraping paint in ways no one would describe as tasteful, much less harmonious or composed. Elegance was out of the question.

While we are yet to see the sophisticated use of squeegee prominent in later years, the scale and discipline are evident.