| LEON REID IV | Biography | The Great Outdoors | Method | The Great Indoors |
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New York-based artist Leon Reid doesn't say much about his work. Sturdy steel sculptures, personified bricks, and sloping sign posts speak for him, resonating with witty messages about isolation, race, irony, love, humor and tension. Reid is among New York's most prolific young artists — and after a decade of street work he's just getting around to showing his work in proper art galleries. Using the name Darius Jones, approximately 150 pieces have been successfully installed and viewed by millions of casual observers since he moved to the city to pursue an arts education in 1998 at Pratt Institute. While he developed his aptitude toward classical subject matter working toward a fine arts degree in the classroom, the street afforded him the canvas and audience to explore issues that were displayed by traditional institution. “I had the capability to make fine art but I couldn't see a link to people who looked like me,” Reid explains Reid was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1979 and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he first began to toy with the notion of art as a necessary public service needed in both established metropolitan areas and blighted urban communities. Coming of age in the 1990s, he was influenced by graffiti art culture, while his upbringing provided inspiration by osmosis from bebop classics of the earlier twentieth century, particularly Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. At age 15 he sparked a hotbed debate with his teenage graffiti pseudonym, VERBS that he prominently displayed on highway overpasses, skyscrapers and street signs in both Cincinnati and New York. He extended his means for public artistic expression in 2000 dropping VERBS and traditional graffiti art and adopting a new street art persona with the pen name Darius Jones. As Darius, Reid began to stretch his imagination in ways that he could make artwork engrained into the social fabric, challenging everyday people's interpretation of their surroundings. Using acquired skill in welding, he donned a hardhat and vest and went underground on New York City streets from Myrtle Ave in the heart of Brooklyn all the way to East 86th St in Manhattan. Incorporating painting and sculpture, he erected signs with timely and ironic messages, including a series incorporating telephone booths with refined signs that forces viewers to reconsider their environment, from destitute blocks to bustling street corners. A forlorn blue and white-scripted public phone sign strains on its side, leaning on the shoulder of a sympathetic one-way post. A site specific self-portrait on a phone sign recreates the surrounding environment, leaving viewers the distinct impression that they are looking in a mirror and seeing the face of the artist peering back at them. His work has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. The New York Times featured him in May 1, 2005 piece, describing his process in detail. “Mr. Reid removes city-owned fixtures from the streets –poles, signs, posts—and lugs them back to his workshop in Greenpoint, where he alters them in subtle and minutely designed ways. He does not steal signs that are in use.” His work took a distinct twist during his fine art master studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Not only did he adapt to the English education system, but he researched the British infrastructure continuing to perform acts of permanent art installation. In one piece from this period, two black and white striped light posts stand three-feet apart; one of the post bends slightly, vying for a kiss from the straight post. The work creates erotic tension between seemingly mundane inanimate objects. Reid continues to stretch the boundaries of spatial limitations on form, creating art in unlikely places that forces people to question their vantage point through visualization, and ultimately functions as a vital component of culture in a progressive society. BY TAMARA WARREN * * * * * * * EDUCATION M.A. Fine Art B.F.A. Fine Art, Painting REPRESENTATION The Jen Bekman Gallery New York: www.jenbekman.com EXHIBITIONS “THOUROUGHFARE” Group show. The Riviera Gallery. Brooklyn 3/06. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS TIME magazine, quoted, and work featured in TIME online slideshow 10/05 RADIO FEATURES RADIO NATIONAL AUSTRALIA. Aired: Thursday, October 20th 2005 GERMAN NATIONAL RADIO. Aired: Friday, September 9th 2005. Darius and Downey featured in street-art segment. SELECTED LECTURES “DARIUS SPEAKS!” The Cooper Union, NY, NY. 11/05 DOCUMENTARY APPEARANCES “PUBLIC DISCOURSE” Dir. Brad Downey,Quenell Jones. 2003. VDB distribution.
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All materials unless otherwise noted Copyright 2007 Leon Reid IV. All Rights Reseved.