Justin James Reed
Justin James Reed was born in 1980 and is based in Richmond, Virginia. He is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University and the co-publisher at Brooklyn-based Horses Think Press. His work has been displayed at Higher Pictures in New York, Atelier Néerlandais in Paris, Unseen Photo Fair in the Netherlands, the Library of Congress, Yale University Art Gallery, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) Gallery, and many more institutions and galleries.
Reed, while primarily a photography, prefers to not have a medium-specificity to his work, allowing for a fluid sense of categorization. He cites artist Robert Smithson as one of his inspirations and influences. His works display a chaotic relationship with temporality where past, present, and the near future seem to collide in, ironically, a moment. Reed contextualizes his works with strong, sharp form, yet leaves space for inexhaustible possibilities. Reed’s work is amusingly self-referential in how it asks us how we contrive meaning and context from such works while we attempt to do so with his work. It highlights the process as we go through it going beyond the mere image and into the conscience.
Text by Perwana Nazif
Images courtesy of Justin James Reed
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