Peter Alexander:
New Resin Works
March 7 —
April 20, 2013
Featuring:
Nyehaus is pleased to present an exhibition of new resin works by pioneering California-based Light and Space artist, Peter Alexander. Tim Nye recently sat down with Peter in his studio to discuss the artist’s exceptional use of color and material, the marriage of image and structure in this work and what it means to be a West Coast artist. Excerpt from A Conversation:
TIM: So you went from drips that had a frozen-in-time aspect, to now the squares which are less about movement but achieve this kind of glorious edge that appears—Well how would you describe the effect you’re trying to achieve? What would be the ideal optical scenario? Certain pigments are much more opaque and so some of them are about fields of color, some are about a gradation, some are almost an atmospheric—Describe what you’re seeking when you feel you nail one of these things.
PETER: Like what water does on coastlines when you fly above it, that movement from saturated color to transparency where it fades and becomes part of the sand. I’m interested in addressing that moment with this work, when the whole piece becomes part of a greater thing, part of the air. It addresses the room it’s in. It wants to become a part of the room by disappearing into it.
Peter Alexander has spent the course of his career focusing intensely on light and its manifold effects in his sculptures, paintings, drawings, and prints. From 1965-72, Alexander worked with resin, producing subtle, luminous, pastel-hued sculptures that seemed to be crafted from light itself. In the early 1970s, he turned to painting, drawing, and printmaking with an almost Impressionistic handling of light, suffusing the works with color and a palpable sense of atmosphere. Alexander’s two-dimensional works display a masterful handling of sun and moonlight, city lights, illuminated water, and, in a charming series of drawings of midnight-black cats, the total absorption of light into velvety darkness.
