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Published in Frieze Art Fair London Catalogue. Frieze: London, 2012.

Alan Reid

Androgynous, privileged-looking, aloof and disconcertingly asexual even when scantily clad, the figures Alan Reid depicts resemble Pompeiian frescoes, fascist neoclassicism and lingerie or perfume advertisements dating from the 1970s to the present. Reid renders these pastel-hued, pale-skinned, elegantly long-limbed figures with wispy colored pencil on canvas. But there’s always more: a contrasting, often abstract layer in the foreground, sometimes involving scraps scavenged from wood shops, such as brightly polychromed dowels. The dark fish in Black Fish (2012) suggests a jarring remove from a woman in a kimono shading her eyes, while in Geometry of Feelings (2012) the image of a bright trumpet is superimposed on the peach-toned topless woman — as if emotion were situated between slippery dream and starker reality. (Kristin M. Jones)  

Alan Reid (b. 1976, Texas) is an artist. He lives in Brooklyn and has presented solo exhibitions at Lisa Cooley, New York; Mary Mary, Glassgow; A Palazzo, Brescia, Nicelle Beauchene, NY, Eric Ruschman, Chicago and Patricia Low, Gstaad. His monograph Warm Equations is published by Edition Patrick Frey. He curated the exhibition Air de Pied-à-terre, at Lisa Cooley, NY. Reid's work has been reviewed by Bomb, Frieze, Vogue, NYTimes, New Yorker, and elsewhere. He both writes and speaks about art, on occasion.
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