Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York, is excited to announce Changes, an exhibition of new works by multidisciplinary artist, Peter Gronquist. Through painting, sculpture, installation, and video works, Gronquist explores the in-betweenness found in nature and its infinite circles of life, seeking to capture and distill moments of transformation and transcendence.
Gronquist is drawn toward the transitional twilight hues of pinks, purples, and oranges that also symbolize harmony, peace, and enlightenment. In outlier, a group of wooden planks leans against a wall, glowing mysteriously pink. They are arranged haphazardly, as though waiting to be assembled into a different arrangement or structure in the future. The 2×4 beams were milled from the iconic Douglas fir trees of the Pacific Northwest landscape where the artist lives and works, and in this piece, the material is again transformed into something poetic.
Changes incorporates several of Gronquist’s light paintings, made up of luminous boxes of light and paint that interact to create a wide range of shifting hues, in a celebration of the hypnotic power of color. The surface treatment of the light paintings confuses the eye and brain, transporting the viewer into their subtle, radiating hues. one day is a time-lapse video of a light painting shot outside the artist’s studio over the course of a whole day. The cycles of color reflect the changing light and color of the environment in which the piece was created. These pieces echo the sublime luminosity found in the works of Mark Rothko and James Turrell. The meditative works are at times interrupted, as in blackout, where Gronquist used a paint roller with the blackest paint available to disrupt the color field, creating a form of controlled chaos and uncertainty.
Gronquist embraces the act of disruption and change in other works. In grey area, an infinity mirror depicts an intricately painted porcelain vase suspended at the exact moment in which it is still recognizable in its form and function, just before it turns into dust. And in dream selector, he documents the process of destroying his childhood dream of owning the luxurious car, black smoke billowing from the red flames, set against the subtle hues of the desert landscape. Through all of the works in Changes, the artist explores the tension between urgency and quietude, action and stillness, and in the intermediate moments that are difficult to define.
Born 1979 in the USA, Peter Gronquist lives and works in Portland, OR after residing in Oakland, CA. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and received a BA in painting from San Francisco Art Institute in 2001. He has exhibited in New York, London, Miami, and San Francisco.
