The Getty Villa

March 14, 2014, 1:13pm

This is not a chair: the Paintings of Jon Reed

Jon Reed (NAP #109) paints objects – very ornate objects to be specific.  His paintings are bright, bold, and full of rich contrasts in their depictions of opulent material goods found at two of the most famous collectors’-homes-turned-museums in California: The Getty Villa and Hearst Castle.

Even if you didn’t know the furniture sources for some of his paintings, they immediately recall the lavish and ornamental furniture and chairs you might only find in a wealthy collector’s home or museum.  Reed takes three-dimensional furniture and various architectural spaces and captures them in time and space as flattened, two-dimensional paintings. Doing so, Reed simultaneously does something interesting to our eye and the way we read the paintings, calling our attention to both their “objectness” and their exact “non-objectness” all at once. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor

Jon Reed | Malibu Suite II, acrylic on birch panel, 24” x 36”, 2011