SURFACE TENSION

A solo exhibition of paintings by Peter Fox
February 23rd - March 18th 2018

Inaugural Reception:
Friday, February 23rd, 7-9 PM

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 representation 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. 

Pattern in Landscape Exhibition

featuring the work of:

Sasha Bezzubov, Thomas Broadbent, Phillip Buehler, Stephen Mallon, Mark Masyga, Ross Racine, Emily Roz, Zoe Wetherall, and Julia Whitney Barnes

Jan 26th-Feb 18th

Front Room is proud to present “Pattern in Landscape,” a group show featuring the work of Sasha Bezzubov, Thomas Broadbent, Stephen Mallon, Mark Masyga, Ross Racine, Emily Roz, Zoe Wetherall and Julia Whitney Barnes. “Pattern in Landscape” includes artists that explore the concept of landscape outside of conventional ideas and incorporate components of pattern into their composition. These artists often make use of naturally occurring patterns such as spirals, waves, tessellations, cracks, stripes, symmetrical branches and fractals. Sasha Bezzubov’s photographs of the “Albedo Zone” are large format black and white stark compositions of Arctic ice and water. Albedo is the measure of diffusive reflection of solar radiation. These photos are stark visible examples of global climate change.

Thomas Broadbent’s installation of watercolor panels, "Lunar Crater Chain" is a highly detailed black and white rendering based on actual moon craters and tiled together in the way that NASA tiles photographs taken by its space rovers. In Phillip Buehler’s aerial photographs from a military airplane storage yard in Arizona the repetition of the same model of bomber aircraft are so abstractly pattern-based that the overall effect beginnings to feel like a Middle Eastern tapestry. Stephen Mallon’s otherworldly “Italian Forest” is a grove of trees in an industrial tree farm. Mallon’s composition directs the viewer to see the parallels and repetition within the forest.

Mark Masyga’s paintings are made up of lively, linear elements in balance with a sensitive, intense sense of color. Masyga incorporates abstracted reference to architectural landscapes in his compositions. Ross Racine creates his hyper-real suburban landscapes with a uniquely developed drawing method combining the languages of drawing and digital imaging. Emily Roz’s paintings’ heightened realism, flowers, seedpods, branches and carcasses coexist in a world of dreamlike unreality. As the animals in these scenes fight for position under the teasing petals, the muted color backdrops preserve the freshness of such eroticism found in nature and violence.

The beauty of Zoe Wetherall’s work is in the structured geometry of natural and man-made forms. Wetherall uses her camera to reveal the beauty in the subtle patterns hidden in architecture and landscape. Photographing the landscape without a reference point to sky or horizon emphasizes natural patterns within the earth's colors and textures. Julia Whitney Barnes combines elements from the human or built environment in surreal juxtapositions with nature. In “Bricks and Stones May Break (Iceland/Rainbow Windows)” the organic landscape is framed through the geometric windows, each tinted a unique hue.