Nathalie Karg and the Green Gallery are delighted to present a special one week exhibition of new paintings by the Milwaukee-based painter Peter Barrickman. The show takes its name, Elwood Arms, from an apartment building in Milwaukee that was home to countless artists, writers, and musicians, and was affectionately nicknamed after its caretaker and most senior tenant.
The show is comprised of eleven acrylic and oil paintings inspired by buildings such as Elwood Arms and their high- ceilinged lobbies. The transient space of a lobby—a place of continual coming and going—becomes a metaphor for the open narrative potential of painting. Considering the ways a painting simultaneously denies and allows reading, Barrickman’s continual experiments with alternating forms and repeating colors create a transitional visual space in which the public expression of the artist meets the private experience of the viewer. Put in the artist’s own words, “it is a formal renewal that serves to clarify and awaken the subject.”
The show will be accompanied by the release of the artist book, Burnt Plastic (Mazagine, 2018).
Peter Barrickman (born 1971) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Milwaukee. He received a BFA from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2002 and an MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College in 2007. His work has been shown at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Swiss Institute New York, NY; 356 Mission Road, Los Angeles, CA; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, MI; Crisp London and The Tate Modern, London; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Elmhurst Art Museum, IL; Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, KA; Milwaukee Art Museum and INOVA in Milwaukee, WI; The Poor Farm in Manawa, WI; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA; Tanzschuleprojects, Munich; and Cite des Arts International in Paris. In 2010 he was awarded the Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship for Established Artists. He has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Centraltrak and the Millay Colony. His work has been written about in ArtForum, Art Papers, Art in America online, the NewRepublic.com and The New York Times online. Barrickman is a member of the Barbouille Hymn, a band that produces a monthly radio program on the FM dial in Milwaukee. He is represented by the Green Gallery.
