David Reed (artist)

David Reed
Painting #580 by David Reed, 2006-2008
Born	1946 (age 70–71) San Diego, California
Nationality	American
Education	Reed College, New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Known for	Painting

David Reed (born 1946) is a contemporary American conceptual and visual artist.

David Reed is known as a colorist and for creating long, narrow abstract paintings on canvas that are hung either lengthwise or vertically and feature several images resembling enlarged photographs of swirling brushstrokes juxtaposed in a single painting. Reed's paintings are engaged in a crossover between film, the electronic media and everyday culture. Besides being a fine arts painter, he is also an installation sculptor, a video artist, a lecturer on contemporary art and art history, and an exhibition curator. He has a fondness for the art from the Baroque and works by Degas and Delacroix.

In discussing paintings by John McLaughlin, the artist and dealer Nicholas Wilder once remarked to David Reed that owners of his paintings often move them into their bedrooms, in order to live with them more intimately. Reed saw in this practice his own aspiration to be a "bedroom painter." For his project "Two Bedrooms in San Francisco," Reed inserted images of his paintings into scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (film), which take place in the bedrooms of the film's two main characters, Judy and Scottie. The modified film clips run continuously on television monitors as part of ensembles, which include life-size replicas of the two beds as they appear in the film and the very paintings that had been inserted in the film.

David Reed was the adviser for the exhibition High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975 curated by Katy Siegel, which traveled to Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro in North Carolina from August 6 to October 15, 2006; Katzen Arts Center at American University in Washington, D.C. from November 21, 2006 to January 21, 2007; National Academy of Design in New York City from February 15 to April 22, 2007; Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum in Mexico City from May 25 to September 9, 2007; Neue Galerie Graz in Graz from December 14, 2007 to February 24, 2008; and Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe from March 28 to June 1, 2008.