The Green Gallery is thrilled to announce Peter Barrickman Untitled Melody, the artist’s eighth exhibition spanning an eighteen year relationship with the gallery. As various avenues of exploration and tangential cycles have occurred, an investigation into organizing principles of composition has remained consistent in his work. The artist's work is currently featured in 50 Paintings at the Milwaukee Art Museum, curated by Margaret Andera and Michelle Grabner.
For Untitled Melody, Barrickman hovers over three subjects that function as a guide for pictorial inquiry. Cardboard (and shipping centers), fire, and winter landscapes, suggest a kind of nameability for fractured and somewhat ambiguous spaces. The catalyst for these paintings comes from the artist’s brief move out of the studio, setting up shop in his backyard and in city parks. This intentional repositioning forced the artist to forgo internal references found in his studio practice, becoming more malleable to the outside. Cardboard boxes derived from oversized Uline catalogs routinely received in the mail; staring into backyard fires trying to capture something present but endlessly fleeting; observing seasonal transitions of the midwest, anticipating and preparing for change. These motifs offer the artist opportunity to both break and re-envision painting strategy.
Cardboard boxes and shipping centers offer investigation into efficiency and modularity. We find this within the artist’s canvases as well as infrastructure of the present. The representation of the grid is clear, however it feels shaky and perhaps unwilling to support itself. As the grid traditionally provides a system of control, Barrickman’s boxes and pictorial environments feel as if they could potentially collapse. Cardboard assembles together and feels machine-like, maybe even figurative at times. What is represented within these paintings suggests an organism; one that reflects the nature of a networked environment in ways that are often unacknowledged and unseen.
In winter landscapes, Barrickman’s modularized spaces appear to melt or thaw. Although forms solidify in freezing temperatures, they also eb and flow during the colder months. Playing with this dynamic, the artist captures an uneasy movement. These pictures are both comforting yet in a state of flux. For the viewer, moments of rest are quickly upended by other pictorial components. Imagery flip flops between suggestions of illusionary depth and topographic mapping. Like the cardboard paintings there is a heightened sense of fragmentation; various landscapes seem to sit within containers amidst a larger grouping of the same. Where the landscape is often a subject to find solace in, it is only ever fleeting; a temporary reprieve in jeopardy.
Barrickman’s fire paintings offer the most intense visual ascension from the artist’s oeuvre. Although they initially partake in a foray of the modular, the expressive strokes denoting fire create a clear visual contrast. Quixotic marks allow spontaneity of drawing to flirt with the artist’s more defined forms. Line becomes a descriptor of movement, suggesting instability and lack of gravity. These works privilege a kind of immediacy that jostles the artist's more defined tendencies. Observing representations of fire in media, we can feel how this amorphous form endlessly ruptures our visual (and visceral) present; uncannily delivered byway of the rectangle, albeit handheld.
We invite you to join us for the debut of this new body of work on Friday, January 19th. A reception with the artist will take place from 6-8pm featuring a live performance of muzak by Ching Suru.