Underdonk

press release

PETER PARK
Patch Ups
January 6 – February 4, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 6, from 6-8 pm
Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday from 1-6pm

Underdonk is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings and photographs by Peter Park entitled “Patch Ups“. In this new group of works, Peter Park continues to use photography as a way to map out his paintings.  The exhibition includes a selection of photographs culled from a vast archive of cell phone pictures taken on his wanderings through various public spaces.  From defective basketball hoops, patched up window cracks to tattered poster ads, the silhouettes of disrepair become starting points for new paintings.  However, the paintings are not a direct interpretation of a singular experience, but rather a buildup of cumulative observations.

Park’s paintings embody a history of add-ons and erasures by piling cut up acrylic paint skins, then sanding down sections of washy brushstrokes.  The mix of rigid forms and fast mark-making allows for the artist to straddle a realm between certainty and a false sense of stability.  These fragmented structural compositions are imbalanced, incomplete, and on the brink of collapse.  His unique brand of minimalist abstraction constantly topples over, buckles under its weight, and is always left with a sense of something missing.

–JJ Manford