Abstract
Reed draws largely on 17th- and 18th-century European paintings and prints for her source material. Using photographs of these works from art history textbooks and other sources, she often borrows themes and imagery from the works but creates her own compositions. This translation from original to photograph, and photograph to painting, gives Reed’s work a contemporary edge, despite its reliance on centuries-old artworks. Her black-and-white palette imbues the work with a cinematic quality, and the large scale of the work (some life-size) invite the viewer to step right into her sumptuously charged environments, filled with figures and wild animals of all kinds in various states of tension with their surroundings and each other. This exhibition will include recent work, including the 47-foot-long In Dubious Battle, along with some older work that will reveal the evolution of her process and imagery.