A self-taught painter, Peter Shear was born in 1980 in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, and grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana. The deeply hued canvases in this exhibition were made on a human scale, most of them mounted on panels measuring 11 x 14 inches. Their overriding characteristic is a distinct absence of dogma: elusive and spare, they hover in an interstitial space between abstraction and representation, often incorporating elements of both. They can suggest figures, landscapes, or architecture, or simply exist as spontaneous configurations of lines and colours.
Read MoreWriting in Hyperallergic about Shear's first New York solo show, John Yau states, 'Shear is not precious about his work. He does not have a fixed palette, nor does he seem to be trying to develop a signature style or set of motifs.'
[...] There is something wonderfully open about Shear's process. He never claims to say more than he's able, recalling Fisher's description of words or, in the artist's case, brushstrokes lying on the surface.
Peter Shear has shown his work across the United States and internationally. He has had solo exhibitions at Castle, Los Angeles, CA (2022); FortnÂight Institute, New York, NY (2021, 2017); KOKI Arts, Tokyo, Japan (2021); Herron School of Art + Design, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN (2019); Devening Projects + Editions, Chicago, IL (2017); and A\M Projects, Indianapolis, IN (2017); ATM, Austin, TX (2016).
Text courtesy Cheim & Read
