Zig-Field 1970

Paul Reed made this Zig-Field print with, I guess, a screenprinting process, though it might as well be collage for how sharp and flat the colors are. There's something so satisfying about that, right? The way he's built up this form, like stacking shapes, reminds me of making a painting. You see how the colors butt up against each other, no blending, no gradients? That magenta against the blue, that pale pink beside the lime green – it’s like he’s pushing these colors to their absolute limit. It's so clean and precise, and that gives it a kind of graphic punch. The image is like an irregular polygon with a strange kind of symmetry. Reed was part of the Washington Color School, and like those guys, he's playing with how we see, how we perceive depth and space with just color alone. It’s like Josef Albers but way more pop! It shows how art’s a continuous conversation, always finding new ways to mess with our heads.