Opening Saturday, January 8th, 2011*

Panel Discussion: January 8th, 5:30pm
Opening Reception: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Discussion and Reception are open to the public

At 5:30pm, Saturday, January 8th, the evening will commence with a 30 minute Panel Discussion with Josh Peters, Ezrha Jean Black, and Geoff Tuck, moderated by Kaycee Olsen, as part of the ongoing series "In Conversation with Kaycee Olsen."

This discussion will reveal the formal aspects of Peters' painting, including the themes of Furious Seasons, which include Peters' mining of still images from obscure films and the inspiration the artist took from a short story by the author Raymond Carver, of which the title of the exhibition Furious Seasons is borrowed.

Josh Peters' most recent paintings in Furious Seasons can be described as both portrait-mask-icons and figures-in-landscape paintings. Figuratively, the subjects are mainly taken from films, albeit mostly obscure with little inherent 'iconic' value associated. Peters makes references to figures "away from civilized society," or, more ambiguously, "a sense of impending violence or spiritual awakening lurking just under the surface." In Peters' recent work, these polarities register side by side, beneath surfaces both saturated and scraped to the canvas (or frequently, especially in larger scaled work, linen), and in either case, luminous with a glow that seems to emanate from within, irradiating both its subjects and whatever space it happens to inhabit, including the viewer's own interior space. Most of this material falls loosely into a category we might label 'mood' or 'atmospheric,' with a few qualifiers. Peters is clearly looking for certain conditions, the 'incident' or its potentiality, the possibility of creating a certain, transformative moment, of communion between subject and artist and viewer. This is not a narrative style, the spaces of these paintings are transparently abstract, existential, but almost quintessentially lyrical.

The Kaycee Olsen Gallery has produced an accompanying catalogue for the exhibition, Furious Seasons, featuring an essay by Ezrha Jean Black, an interview with the artist conducted by Geoff Tuck, images from Furious Seasons, and additional selected works. The catalogue will be available for purchase in the gallery.