Anton Perich
Painting in the Machine
On View: June 16 – September 1st, 2016
Opening reception: June 16, 6 – 8PM
Gallery 151 is proud to present “Painting in the Machine”, a solo exhibition by Anton Perich – displaying twelve large new canvases from this decade. In the recent paintings by Perich, additional element has convened through electricity and gravity – a drip.
Since the late 1970’s, the “machine paintings” are trademarked by their horizontal mechanized strokes, resembling a distorted analog screen. Perich sought out the high resolution effect in his work, as some sort of an enigmatic desire.
This is not the first time a drip reinvented the painting. The familiar examples of drip pioneers Norman Bluhm and Jackson Pollock come to mind. Yet, in this modernized example, the drip is the excess data dissolving and dripping off the canvas. Vanishing into the abyss. Perich candidly explores this age-of-information parable by leaving the canvas at a furious pace. The so-called flat screen promises of millions of colors, down the drain, so to speak. Meanwhile, the artist restrains his machine to produce only twelve colors. Less [information] is more.
Anton Perich’s electro-charged palette is prevalent in Eurydice and Emanation, similarly to the “drip paintings” by Ronnie Landfield and Dan Christensen – but more controlled. The less-automatic drips take elegant shapes (Arabic script or botanical tassels) as they dance through the static lines and then gently slide off, while some remain tucked in the crevices of acrylic paint’s texture. Viewer’s attention is held with a motionless traction in the musing figurative pieces such as Andrea, White and Dance Movement I, and the digital strokes appear to fade in & out — as though recollecting a vision. The artist-curated titles of the work present an unceasing quest for spirituality, mythology, fetishism, sensuality, among other supreme entities that eternally withstand the digital impact.
“Painting in the Machine” is curated by Wallplay and is presented in collaboration with Postmasters Gallery, New York.
*Image: Electric painting machine and a primed canvas, studio of Anton Perich, 2016, courtesy of the artist
