PETER STEPHENS
LOVE POTION
Solo exhibition of new paintings by Peter Stephens
Exhibition Dates:
March 4 - April 29, 2022
Opening Reception:
Friday, March 4, 2022, 5:00-9:00pm
Artist Talk:
Saturday, April 2 @ 11:00am
Rivalry Projects is pleased to present Love Potion, an exhibition of new paintings by the acclaimed Buffalo-based painter Peter Stephens. This is Stephens’ first exhibition with Rivalry Projects, having previously exhibited with Nina Freudenheim Gallery (Buffalo) in addition to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and galleries across the United States and Canada.
A native of Buffalo, New York, Peter Stephens’ principal artistic touchstone has long been the work in the permanent collection of the Albright-Knox. As his painting style has evolved into vibrant abstraction it echoes the museum’s renowned holdings of Abstract Expressionist and Op-Art paintings. Melding line, color, and density, Stephens’ paintings within Love Potion, press outward against their own flatness through paragraphs of color, across which a scaffolding of lines, beats, dashes, and blips propel the eye across their surface. The alchemy alluded to through the exhibition’s title (also a title of one of Stephens’ new paintings) is one in which the artist’s hand and the viewer’s eye synchronously commingle.
Composed of large-scale paintings, Love Potion continues Stephens’ investigations into scientific resonances, specifically in relation to principles of geometry and mathematical systems. Love Potion is invigorated by Stephens’ use of high-key color, grids, and line used in the mapping of chance, pattern, and morphology both within and beyond the painting’s surface.
From a distance Stephens’ work within Love Potion indirectly mimics bolts of fabric in which color, warp, and weft are wed to geometry through the artist’s invisible hand. Individually they offer the eye an elixir of escape from the blue haze of digital minutiae. Stephens’ new work demonstrates that from a primal mix of, line, form, and paint a love potion can be brewed, responding to our shared histories, and the wonderment of our perceptions of color.
WORKS
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Peter Stephens (b. 1958) is an acclaimed artist whose paintings are in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, the Castellani Art Museum (Lewiston, NY), the Fenimore Art Museum (Cooperstown, NY), and numerous private collections. Previous gallery representation and solo exhibitions have been through Nina Freudenheim Gallery, and select group exhibitions including Stephens’ paintings have taken place in Chicago, Miami, San Diego, Dallas / Fort Worth, Toronto, and New York.