September 17 - Oct 17 2021
Peter Brock: The Limited Sphere
A smooth plaster surface hovers above a thin strip of polished metal. In the upper realm we find luminous auras, bleached out skies, gritty clouds, and the hazy silhouette of a looming catastrophe. In relation to these richly textured fields, the slender rectangle of aluminum below feels harshly mechanical yet captivatingly shiny. These are frescoes for the touchscreen generation.
Peter Brock’s paintings use the conventions of landscape to explore the hopes and anxieties that drive our relationship to technological change and its impact on the physical environment. The horizon structures the conflict between our desires and our limitations, lending its expanse to this intractable friction. On these thin aluminum panels we encounter a material horizon: two distinct substances that share a linear boundary—together forming a psychological and spatial proposition.
Brock’s work collapses the distinction between object and image. Instead of depiction, these paintings offer a place in which to confront our bodily constraints in relation to the luminous depth of the screen and its infinite permutations. As a genre, landscape is as much about projecting our aspirations and contemplating our fate as it is concerned with observing the natural world. The horizon is at once a physical boundary and the axis of change. These works invite us to linger within the uncertainty of liminal space.
