Peter Barrickman is what many would call a painter’s painter, a label that means little on its face, but also suggests an abiding interest in the medium’s deeper possibilities. Even in its sloppiness the term implies a certain commitment to the potential of the medium beyond superficial results, and a reciprocity with other practitioners. His current exhibition “Untitled Melodies” at Green Gallery through March 1 is a gift to those painters and confirms that one artist’s faith in his internal pursuit might lead, with persistence, to another’s visual salvation.

The 12 paintings in the exhibition operate between representation and abstraction. This in itself isn’t notable as most painters working today migrate between these realms to some degree; however, Barrickman’s particular approach arrives at a seductive ambiguity that pushes each mode aside on its way to a space of its own. It’s a space beholden to neither and satisfying both. The works in the exhibition evolve from three basic natural conceits: winter landscapes, fulfillment centers, and fires.

The Green Gallery is pleased to announce its participation on Platform for the month of May. We are presenting works by Mari Eastman and Peter Barrickman. Four works by each artist are featured for this limited time through Platform's site.

Nathalie Karg and the Green Gallery are delighted to present a special one week exhibition of new paintings by the Milwaukee-based painter Peter Barrickman. The show takes its name, Elwood Arms, from an apartment building in Milwaukee that was home to countless artists, writers, and musicians, and was afectionately nicknamed after its caretaker and most senior tenant.

The show is comprised of eleven acrylic and oil paintings inspired by buildings such as Elwood Arms and their high-ceilinged lobbies. The transient space of a lobby—a place of continual coming and going—becomes a metaphor for the open narrative potential of painting. Considering the ways a painting simultaneously denies and allows reading, Barrickman’s continual experiments with alternating forms and repeating colors create a transitional visual space in which the public expression of the artist meets with the private experience of the viewer. Put in the artist’s own words, “it is a formal renewal that serves to clarify and awaken the subject.”

The show will be accompanied by the release of the artist book, Burnt Plastic (Magazine, 2018).