AUTONOMIC (TRACY VOLKSWAGEN)
Peter Fox AUTONOMIC (TRACY VOLKSWAGEN) paintings, along with all 10 seasons (152 episodes!!) of TRACY VOLKSWAGEN TV, are now online - click on above pic and check it out!
A departure from his signature drip paintings, Fox’s Autonomic (Tracy Volkswagen) is a contemporary conceptual twist on the automatic drawing and painting practices associated with Dada and Surrealism. Fox reframes the subjective, subconscious, psychic phenomena of Automatism, placing it at the center of an objectively-constructed painting process, to be performed by an adventitiously-named alter-identity: ‘Tracy Volkswagen’. Wearing a video camera, Fox/Volkswagen records a real-time, full-length, first-person view of the Autonomic (Tracy Volkswagen) studio experience. The compelling out-of-body video documentation is presented in the gallery alongside the finished paintings.
The project is born of Fox’s conceptually-driven 2001/2002 performance, 10,000 Automatic Drawings. Fox created 10,000 automatic drawings in a single year, working in a trance-like state and allowing the pen to direct itself on the paper toward internal concept and content, without conscious intervention or editing. With Autonomic (Tracy Volkswagen), Fox takes automatism a step further, leaving his personal identity at the door and inviting an indeterminate, ungendered, automatic Tracy Volkswagen to literally run the show.
Gathering paint, brushes and canvas, Fox limits his artistic agency to setting the scene and preparing the stage for Volkswagen’s performance, creating an environment that requires few conscious decisions to be made once the action begins. A palette of primary-based colors is premixed, canvases are stretched and brushes are laid out. Fox steps back, Volkswagen steps forward and the camera switches on.
With the active voice of a separately-willed, autonomous intuition, Volkswagen’s brush creates paintings that oscillate between rigorous abstraction and an uncanny surreal. Charged with its own faculty, with intention and identity stripped away, the work projects the disorienting aura of vicarious hallucination.
Peter Fox lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. This is his first solo exhibition with beta pictoris gallery. Fox’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally.
HATCH
2013
oil on canvas
48 by 48 in.
WINGMAN
2013
oil on canvas
48 by 48 in.
OUTREACH
2013
oil on canvas
50 by 70 in.
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| Untitled (STFU) 2013 acrylic on canvas 28 by 20 in. private collection, New York, NY |
Untitled (GTFO) 2013 acrylic on canvas 28 by 20 in. private collection, New York, NY |
"Aware that acrylic paint shrinks as it dries and again over time as it cures, I set out to see if it works on paper. I cut the self-reflexive text into a plywood panel to make a thick, re-usable stencil, place it on thin stock, fill the voids with dense paint, squeegee it smooth and then lift it. With time, as the raised letters flatten, the paper heaves, buckles and bears a kind of literal witness to the authority of printed words."
-- Peter Fox
NO TITLE (WORKS ON PAPER), 7.12.2013
2013
acrylic on paper
17.5 by 23.25 in.
NO TITLE (WORKS ON PAPER), 7.6.2013
2013
acrylic on paper
17.5 by 23.25 in.
private collection, Chicago, IL
Diver (after Richter)
2009
acrylic on canvas
44 by 44 in.
private collection, New York, NY
The Break (after Richter)
2009
acrylic on canvas
60 by 120 in. (dyptich)
View of Delft (after Vermeer)
2009
acrylic on canvas
7 feet by 14 feet
View of Delft (after Vermeer)
Full Circle (Moving Target)
2009
acrylic on canvas
ca. 60 in. diam.
Rise
2010
acrylic on panel
ca. 104 by 9 in. (triptych)
Rise (detail)
No Title
2009
acrylic on canvas
10 by 8 in.
Book Virtue Dirt
2006
acrylic on canvas
18 by 18 in.
Cloud Burst
2010
acrylic on canvas
ca. 40 by 40 in.
Untitled (IDIOT PROOF)
2000
acrylic on canvas
20 by 24 in.
Untitled (NO BODY)
2000
acrylic on canvas
ca. 20 by 24 in.
private collection, Birmingham, AL
Untitled (JOKESON YOUJACK)
2002
acrylic on canvas
90 by 144 in. (tryptich)
a selection of small works on paper (more are available, check with gallery)
dimensions variable
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Untitled (I'M A MESS)
2009
acrylic on canvas
ca. 60 in. diam.
private collection, Birmingham, AL
3 U's
2009
acrylic on canvas
42 by 30 in.
Big Self Portrait
2009
acrylic on canvas
73 by 73 in.
private collection, Birmingham, AL
Open Source
2009
acrylic on mountaineering tent
96 by 168 by 41 in.
The Hairy Eyeball (Wut U Get)
2011
acrylic on canvas
50 by 60 in.
WHITE FLAG
2012
acrylic on canvas
small : 30 by 48 i.n
private collection, Birmingham, AL
large : 46 by 76 1/4 in.
private collection, Chicago, IL
"My work in the show began as an open meditation on Jasper Johns' 'White Flag', a loose re-understanding that appropriates his basic formal elements - graphic flag theme, divided canvas and monochrome palette.
Johns' flag serves as a conceptual jumping-off point - a place to depart rather than arrive.
From there, mine takes a more reductive, minimal tack.
The division of the support is simplified as two equal panels and gestural brushwork is translated to a uniform, repetitive drip motif, becoming an abstraction of Johns' already abstract flag.
The image of the flag is no longer foregrounded, but hovers near (or just below) the threshold of conscious perception.
Its flagness is mute, sensed instead of seen - an un-flag.
While working on it, I was cognizant of white flags as surrender signals.
Perhaps that's how this work operates - as a release - a letting go - of identity, control, expectation.
An opening up. A freedom?"
Interestingly, both flags "reveal" the existance of the American flag
within the paintings when certain translucent elements
of the painting process are exposed to natural light form a certain angle.
Very hard to see with the eye, it appears when photographed.
