Peter Shear: Reality Show

I woke in a spacious room with lavender
wallpaper and brocaded, antique drapes. There
were clothes laid out for me on a fainting
couch. They fit as if they had been tailored
for me. As I descended the staircase, I had
no idea what to expect. A maid showed me to
the breakfast room and brought me coffee and
biscuits. I stared out the window at the gardens.
After a while, a man entered the room and asked
me if I had everything I needed. "Oh yes," I
said, "everything is lovely." ''Do you have
any questions?" he asked me. "No," I said.
“Later, Gwen and I will show you around the
grounds,” he said. "I look forward to that,”
I said. Then he left me there all alone. Gwendolyn.
It's strange how one knows nothing, and, yet,
knows more than one wants to know. I knew that
I would fall in love with Gwendolyn. I knew
that there would be a duel. I knew that this
graceful mansion would burn to the ground. I
sat there waiting, incredibly lonesome with my
awful knowledge. [1]

—James Tate, “The Fragrant Cloud”

BLUM is pleased to announce Reality Show, Bloomington, Indiana-based artist Peter Shear's first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Utilizing the art of suggestion, Shear loosely renders recognizable forms in distinctive palettes to create paintings that trigger open-ended recognition in their viewers. Drawing inspiration from a range of topics as disparate as the internet is vast, Shear intakes a large quantity of visual information—a single painting may, for instance, be influenced by the oeuvre of Dutch Golden Age painter Judith Leyster, an image of several neatly arranged green Adidas Sambas, a drawing by contemporary British artist David Shrigley, and a news headline that reads “Where’s Princess Kate?” The resulting works broadly deploy intuitively familiar aesthetics to underscore our universally shared connection to the collective unconscious.

With compositions that alternate between pure abstraction and representational elements, Shear avoids stylistic categorization, instead preferring to respond to and channel the whims of his materials. Activating an interest in the artifice of painting, Shear cross-pollinates devices that span the medium—diffusing mountain-like crests into the prongs of gestural brushstrokes in Land (2023) or playing with depth perception as created by shading a geometric abstraction in Double Sided (2024). By resisting the traditional schools of painting, Shear makes room for a viewer to situate his work amongst any number of subjective things or ideas.

Taking this prompt for individualized interpretation one step further, Shear states that his paintings are meant to encourage viewers to “finish the sentence.” In other words, the intention of each work has been left open-ended in a generous gesture that allows space for personal associations and experiences. In this way, the connection formed between individual and painting is the work’s purpose—each canvas or panel is otherwise left open and free of determination until the next psyche sets out to explore it.

In a post-internet era, Carl Jung’s collective unconscious has materialized in Instagram—this platform has become the well from which much of the population draws their imagery and information. Shear’s work is informed by the manner in which social media impacts our absorption of news. “I think the way that my paintings cycle in and out of themes or argue with each other mimics the Instagram environment—you’re seeing, for instance, a Rothko next to Hypebeast sneakers. The mind tells a story about that, and I’m interested in how people put things together.”

The artist’s first monograph, Accident Report, was released earlier this year by American Art Catalogues. Shear will sign copies during the public opening, Saturday, July 13, at 6pm.


[1] James Tate, “The Fragrant Cloud,” in Return to the City of White Donkeys: Poems, (New York: Ecco Press, 2005), courtesy of Estate of James Tate.