PRESS RELEASE
JJ PEET: OSVRX
25 August – 29 September 2017
Opening reception: Thursday, 24 August, 6 to 8 pm*
Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by JJ PEET. Based in Minneapolis and New York, PEET’s oeuvre spans multiple media, including ceramics, installation, audio/video, painting, drawing and sculpture. Utilizing the handmade as a way to take in and process life’s experience, PEET views his object making as a means to translate energy from himself to others. The end result of this multi-faceted, layered approach is aesthetically raw and purposefully unpolished, belying the elegant and precise decision making processes by which works are created.
Titled OSVRX, an internal reference to language, coding and embedded meaning, PEET’s debut exhibition at the gallery highlights a suite of cast bronze sculptures as well as a selection of paintings on panel. A filtered reflection of our time, PEET’s objects are of the moment and imbued with awareness – political, social, elemental. At the same time, they are otherworldly. Transfer Station, the largest cast sculpture in the show, serves as a gateway to a universal shift in seeing. Literally a threshold, the sculpture invites viewers to step up onto it, thus changing their perspective.
Paintings in the exhibition share the rough-hewn technique of PEET’s sculptures but fall within a more formal order. Each painting is created in a series of steps, with surfaces layered one over another, often taking information from mistakes or happenstance. The content investigates the connection between sight and mind; the thin line between viewing and being viewed, a ‘Big Brother’ society, and how the act of watching affects thought process, communication and understanding.
Concurrent with his show at Anthony Meier Fine Arts, PEET will debut a video exhibition entitled THE VACANT AMERICAN at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Opening 13 September, this inaugural project for BAMPFA’s On the Hour series highlights two films chronicling PEETs travels to various geographic locations. An artist talk will take place on Monday 11 September at 6:30 pm.
PEET’s work will be included in the new Phaidon Press publication Vitamin C: New Perspectives in Contemporary Art, Clay and Ceramics, the latest in the series of Vitamin books, which introduce developments in contemporary art of a specific medium to a broad audience. The book will be published in October 2017.
*complimentary valet parking
