Reed Anderson’s exhibition Flagworks 2017-2024 marks his first solo show with the gallery. He previously participated in two group shows with his signature cut paper pieces: Decades, March 2024 and Collage/Assemblage, May 2023.
This exhibition will feature over 10 flags and banners, both made with sewn UV coated rip-stop nylon.
Regarding the flag pieces the artist states:
I moved in 2016 to Berkshires in Massachusetts, where I had more physical and psychological space that I began to decipher the calling of this new work.
I resisted the word flag for a long time, insisting these were paintings. Call me stubborn but the polemics of flags bothered me. Probably due to my own feelings of freedom with this new work…
Aesthetically there is a lot to enjoy, and beauty is all too underrated. The formal aspects of combining colors in this readymade material remixes memories of my youth: festivals, sailing, skiing, fashion and popular culture of the 80s… all things that I love and found new life in this body of works. These colorful sails had drifted across the water as abstract kinetic sculpture harnessing the wind.
The new banner pieces diverge from the singularity of the flags, embodying a temporal quality akin to film or a musical score. In addition, the banners are not fixed and can be “played” in various hanging arrangements in space. They require the viewer to navigate around them to fully experience the work.
Reed Anderson (b.1969 NYC) studied painting at the Cleveland Institute of art with Julian Stanczak. After 3 years in Cleveland Anderson transferred to the San Francisco Art Institute where he graduated with a BFA in Printmaking. Anderson attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and after a decade of living and working in Brooklyn, attended Stanford University and Graduated with an MFA in studio art in 2009. Anderson has been exhibiting work across disciplines nationally and internationally for over 25 years.
Reed’s work is in public collections that include MOMA, NYC; Albright Knox, Buffalo; The West Collection, Philadelphia; The Olbricht collection, Essen Germany and The Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Austria among numerous private collections. Anderson is also the Director and Curator of RA, a contemporary gallery and project space in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he currently lives with his family.