Gallery Y: Peter Drake: “Re-Animate”

Gallery X: Scott Carter: “Force Majeure”

October 26-December 8, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, October 26, 2012 from 6-9pm

Marking Peter Drake’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, Linda Warren Projects proudly presents, “Re-Animate” in Gallery Y. In recent years, Drake’s work has primarily stemmed from his exploration of the lead soldier collection left to him by his father, which ignited the artist’s imagination and concern with inventions of imagery, and its power of indoctrination and subversion. As Drake “played” with these toys using his masterful painting skills, breathing life into these incredibly static objects with the use of light, color, gesture, scale and composition, he taught himself the tools needed to multi-dimensionalize his characters in real space and time. Using a technique combining stop motion, live action and digital effects, Drake’s vocabulary has expanded to fully embrace his predilection towards the cinematic.

In the new series of paintings and seven animation videos on display, viewers are able to explore the interrelationship that these seemingly separate processes and practices have with one another in forming Drake’s visual language. Whereas paintings preceded and once provoked the inspiration for his work in video, in “Re-Animate” it is now the animations which provide the impetus for Drake to discover and hone a specific composition that embodies the essence of a story – that iconic moment, or single image that will at once tell it all, yet remain open to interpretation.

“By placing the figures in settings that are both familiar and unexpected, I hope to highlight some of the consequences of the history of conflict epitomized by these lead toys….This is not a critique of any one conflict but rather a reflection of a military adventurism that has marked the history of the world.”

An exception to the toy imagery on view, but a poignant example of how Drake’s decades of work continues to feed his current practice, is the grouping of work on display which includes the painting Chandelier (2012), the video animation Fluttering (2011) and Flutter Study (1991), a small acrylic and oil sketch that assisted the creation of a large-scale dream painting in 1993. Not only does Drake captivate us with each medium he’s incorporated throughout the breadth of his career, he also maximizes through the creative potential of each genre a seemingly endless capacity to further his ideas.

In Scott Carter’s exhibit, “Force Majeure,” opening in Gallery X, the artist’s interest in merging his two separate creative practices –that of a musician/drummer and that of a sculptor/constructor—is realized. For Carter, the swinging of a hammer prompts the notion of the sounds produced by playing the drums. In an effort to address the tension caused by these independent interests, Carter marries some of the hallmarks of each of these equally compelling forces in this new body of work, negotiating and balancing their inherent differences. Highlighted in this exhibition are the improvisational elements and instant gratification enjoyed from his music making, as well as the delayed fulfillment that comes from the longer process of creating artwork. Each work in the show is an attempt to deliberately control and derive sound from common building materials and household objects.

As an artist, architecture, design and form are at the core of Carter’s practice, and taking center stage in the gallery space is 16th’s on center: a drum set created from a combination of drywall and reclaimed drum set hardware. Carter’s use of drywall in his artwork goes back several years, informed by his work in construction as a carpenter that also inspired the artist’s concern with ideas of how humans connect and respond to the built environment. Replete with sculpture, video, drawing, performance and installation, “Force Majeure” suggests that the outcome is wrought with accident and even absurdity, producing haphazard and contradictory results. Nonetheless emerging from this quest are unmistakable forms of beauty that resonate strongly with both purity and honesty, and a union of multiple artistic vocations.

Peter Drake’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the US and Europe. His works are included in numerous prestigious private collections as well as the collections of the Whitney Museum, Phoenix Museum of Art, MOCA LA, The L.A. County Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City among others. Articles and reviews of Peter Drake’s work have appeared in Art in America, Art New England, Flash Art, Interview Magazine, The New York Times, Art & Antiques, Time Out, and ARTnews. Having successfully completed numerous private and corporate commissions, Drake is currently finishing a large-scale triptych to be installed in the new Eaton Headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio and recently was awarded a major permanent Public Art Commission for New York. He is an active visiting lecturer and artist at numerous museums and colleges, and in 2010, Drake was named Dean of Academics Affairs at The New York Academy of Art. Additionally he served as a curator for The Drawing Center in New York City and for two years he wrote art reviews for Flash Art Magazine. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a 2006 fellowship in painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts award and was a awarded a year long Artist in Residency at the Kunst Station Sankt Peter in Koln, Germany. Peter Drake’s work can be viewed in upcoming international exhibitions at the World Financial Center in Shanghai, China and in Stuttgart, Germany. Peter Drake received his BFA from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. He lives in Manhattan.

Originally from Kentucky, Scott Carter is a Chicago-based artist. He received his MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 where he was the first recipient of the Eldon Danhausen Fellowship for Sculpture. He was also recently awarded the Beers Lambert Contemporary prize in sculpture (London) and was a finalist for the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Prize and the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship. His work has been exhibited in such venues as the Contemporary Arts Center in Las Vegas, the Lexington Art League, Union League Club of Chicago, Heaven Gallery and Noble and Superior Projects. Currently he is part of a group exhibition, “Somewhere Else,” at the Urban Institute of Contemporary art in Grand Rapids, Michigan as well as an exhibition entitled “Plural Zone” that is taking place on the campus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the International Sculpture Conference. Carter is working on a solo exhibition at the Evanston Art Center in Evanston, Illinois and will also be participating and performing in the 2013 CAFKA Biennial/Open Ears Sound Festival in Kitchener/ Waterloo, Canada.