Peter Fox, "Surface Tension"

Front Room gallery is proud to present "Surface Tension," Peter Fox’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. With this series of new paintings, Fox has reduced his palette to earth tones, which accentuate the natural contrasts in burnt siennas, dark browns and yellow ochres with the cool blues of Payne’s grey. This series delves into the artist’s sub-conscious; created in a controlled self-reflexive state, the surface forms and gestures are defined by the act of application itself.

Peter Fox’s style of painting involves layering processes, reflecting the conceptual layering that underlies the larger project. These works develop and explore relational color constructs, mediated through formal systems which reference automatic drawing, abstract painting and process art.

There is a tension created between the physical depth of the material surface of the paintings and the illusion of depth. This surface tension draws the viewer into a field of vision that creates a transfiguration of the forms into seemingly recognizable imagery and narrative references. This illusion is a construct of the viewer as Fox maintains no representational references in these processed based works.

Peter Fox’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the US and internationally, in numerous gallery, institutional, and museum contexts, including Front Room, Pierogi, and Roebling Hall (NYC), Beta Pictoris Gallery (Birmingham, AL), Good Citizen (St. Louis), Magazzino d’Arte Moderna (Rome), The New Hampshire Institute of Art, The Washington State University Galleries, The University Art Museum at SUNY and the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, (Porto Alegre, Brazil), where it is in the permanent collection. His work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Salon, Artcritical, Hyperallergic, The Washington Post, Artnet, ArtNotes, Segno and TimeOut Roma, among other publications.