Peter Maier “Portraits”

Louis K. Meisel Gallery

[Image: Peter Maier "Pisces” (2016) Axalta CROMAX Pro on fabricated aluminum panel, 90 x 60 in.]

This event has ended.

Louis K. Meisel Gallery presents Peter Maier’s solo exhibition, Portraits. Comprised of large-scale Photorealist paintings, Portraits features oversized imagery of a variety of species of animals, fish and birds.

Since the mid-16th century, a portrait has been defined as a painting that depicts a person; Maier’s latest body of work challenges this interpretation. Each of his subjects appears posed before the viewer, and as in traditional portraiture, many of the animals are featured as busts. As Maier explains, “I was and have always been fascinated with animals, so I decided that I would paint them, but not in a manner that one is accustomed to seeing them in wildlife type art or in illustrations.” By referring and depicting animals as “portraits”, Maier humanizes his subjects. He forces his viewer to look to look into the eyes of each animal, thereby creating an interaction between the animal and their audience.
Many who visit this exhibition will mistake Maier’s perfectly rendered imagery for photography. However, there is no photographic material hiding on these surfaces. A former automotive designer for GM, Maier is the only artist to have access to Axalta CROMAX Pro, a state-of-the- art waterborne automotive paint. He paints atop customized aluminum panels, which are later clear-coated (just like automobiles) to give his paintings a spectacularly luminous quality. With these materials, Maier has developed a unique color-layering process, which when combined with industrial paint technology and traditional brushwork produces shockingly beautiful surfaces.

This is Peter Maier’s third solo exhibition with the Louis K. Meisel Gallery. In 2014, the Butler Institute of American Art acquired an early portrait by Maier of a full-sized Clydesdale entitled Horse-Power (Ben); this painting has been given a permanent position in the foyer of the museum. Maier was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1945 and holds a B.F.A. from Pratt University. In 1980, he designed the Cadillac Seville and the Cadillac El Dorado.