NYAB Event - Peggy Cyphers "Animal Spirits"

Peggy Cyphers "Animal Spirits"

The Proposition

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The Proposition presents Animal Spirits, a selection from the most recent paintings by Peggy Cyphers. After an eight-year hiatus, this will be Cyphers’ first solo show in the gallery’s new space.The gallery has represented Cyphers’ work for over 20 years.

This series of paintings have, “compositional qualities that reflect spaces of weightlessness and expansive consciousness with a focus on predatory birds” as a visual reference striving to reach a plane of gravitational and mental freedom.”

Peggy Cyphers’ painted characters and landscapes vibrate in dialogues of rhythm and repetition that influence sensory perception. Her surfaces recall color field, where abstract forms operate in a psychological dialogue of association – congestion and vast span, hyper-speed and recognizable icons. Cyphers’ painting is automatic writing - a stream of consciousness between geological, primordial and cultural time. Brush marks dominate her work.

These new works by Cyphers create a sense of wonder and awe for the viewer and will be accompanied by “Stacked Waterfalls”, a film installation which will be viewable from the front of the gallery, dusk till dawn everyday. “Stacked Waterfalls” is a response to encounters with powerful forces and will create an environment of mystery and change the context of the environment of the show.

Peggy Cyphers was born and raised in Baltimore and Chesapeake Beach, Maryland and has been living and working in New York City and Brooklyn for over 30 years.

Cyphers has shown nationally and internationally since her first exhibition “Modern Fossils” in the East Village in 1984 and has been reviewed in the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America & New York Observer, among many others.

Cyphers is the recipient of prestigious awards including the Peter S. Reed Foundation Award 2011, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts 1997, National Studio Award, P.S.1, 1991, National Endowment for the Arts 1985, among others and is a Professor of Painting at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY (1989-Present).

[Image: Peggy Cyphers "Floaters" (2012) Acrylic paint, sand, and gold on canvas, 46 x 42 in.]