McKenzie Fine Art: Gary Petersen Exhibition 2016

55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467 fax 212 989 5642

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	Gary Petersen: Back There Behind the Sun September 7 - October 16, 2016
	In this exhibition Petersen continues his exploration of colorful, hard-edged geometric and linear forms engaged in layered, dynamic spatial play. The artist’s bright and exuberant color sense belies the sophistication of his compositional arrangements: irregular geometric forms overlap one another with rhythmic energy, punctuated by linear elements which zip across the surface, articulating larger masses of color while providing movement and direction. Petersen starts his work with an underlying painting of irregular lines, grids, rectilinear forms and attenuated geometries arranged in nesting patterns and diagonals. He then uses a thin wash of white to partially obscure the underpainting. This substructure becomes the architecture onto which he builds up his third layer of forms, which dance across the surface and engage with the elements underneath in a complex and dynamic dialogue of color and form. Petersen’s process throughout is an intuitive one as he creates multiple spatial layers in his paintings while disrupting a sense of overall coherence, as puzzle-like and moveable lines and forms appear, recede or disappear. The title of the exhibition, Back There Behind the Sun, references a recurring fictional theme regarding a hypothetical planet on the other side of the sun from earth, which can’t be seen since it orbits exactly opposite from our own planet. Petersen’s paintings hint at another world, glimpsed between his colorful forms moving through space, coupled with an optimistic sense of the endless possibilities of new configurations.