These reviews have been abridged, mainly to emphasize me. My apologies to the reviewers for chopping up their good work.
Peter Harris: Lush Life
Clifford Smith Gallery
Boston, Ma
The Photography of Peter R. Harris is steeped in mystery. Take, for example, the signature image of his recent show, titled “Lush Life”. Unless one is versed in construction methods or else has the opportunity to query the artist directly, essential questions about the photo’s composition,- is it steel or concrete? paint or tar?molten? - must go unanswered.
What remains is effect. At once enormously present and yet semantically distant as Stonehenge, these photos are unmistakably surreal, leaving the viewer to ask not simply “What is is?” but “What has it become?’ and “What is it doing there?” That we’re moved to ask these questions at all runs counter to the anthropomorphic suggestions of the exhibit’s title. Still, Harris never quite abandons the earthly origins of his structures.
“Some people see color photography as a medium that’s representative of reality. I see it as interpretive,” says the Fort Point Channel area resident. But Harris is intent on leaving the interpreting to his audience....
...In these later works Harris has outdone himself. Equipped with a heightened visual expression, no longer are all the images open to interpretation. Their unabashed persuasiveness is to his credit: an air conditioning duct glows orange red as if its heat were sexual. Boston’s Federal Reserve Building twists in silhouette as a fantastic twilight snakes from behind. The clouds in this picture are sublime.
“I work intuitively,” claims Harris. But don’t be fooled: he’s finely tuned his intuition to detect astounding realities of light and color. Though he may skirt a surreal fringes, the reality of his photo’s is important to him - he doesn’t build models or use digital techniques. And while there is a certain painterly way about his visual abstractions, he relishes the irony that abstraction delivers to photography.
The contradictions, after all, are what makes the work compelling within a human context.
Flat,Square, and on the Wall
Peter Harris and Adie Russell
Fort Point Community Gallery
300 Summer St.
Boston, Ma
...Juror Annette Lemieux chose Photographer Peter Harris and painter Adie Russell for the show and one’s work complements the other’s well. They deal with levels of reality, perception, and expectation...
Harris makes photographs that are more art objects than pictures. “Blue With Grid” is a luminous cobalt-blue photo of what looks like pegboard. It is an abstract reference that puts us in the neighborhood of modernist painting, yet the electric quality of the light is purely photographic. Blue as it is, it’s hot..
FLAT, SQUARE AND ON THE WALL
For two artists working in different mediums, painter Adie Russell and photographer Peter Harris’s work share enough similarities to make their show a pairing of kindred spirits. In Flat, Square and on the Wall, at the Fort Point Artists Collective Gallery, they have created works that are consistent in scale. And yes, as the title indicates, the images are all flat, square and on the wall – Russell’s paintings are all 70 by 70 inches; Harris’s photographs are 40 by 40.
Harris’ photos have a lot in common with the painterly concerns in Russell’s work. He, too, introduces the pin-point-like grid of small dots into his lushly colored photographs. In “Red Cloud,” we see a layer of dirty rust-colored clouds, apparently shot looking straight up at the heavens. In portions of the photo where the cloud cover thins, we see a grid of dots filling the sky.
Harris delights in creating fields of saturated color, as in “Medium Nine” with its almost monochromatic expanse of cobalt blue and nine red glittery balls aligned in a grid. The balls are partly obscured by a blue haze that hovers around them. It’s something like Christmas in a galaxy far, far away, although it’s also strikingly beautiful. There are more grids to be seen in “Blue with Grid,” which also features an expanse of deep blue that seems to darken around the picture’s edges, giving it the illusion of atmospheric depth. The contrast between the flat, mathematical precision of the grid and the softness of visual space that Harris seems to construct with lush strokes of an airbrush offers a finely tuned counterpoint that is a pleasure to view.
Abstracting Thoughts
Linda Leslie Brown, Keith Francis, William Frese, Peter
Harris, Reese Inman
Space 200
...Upon entering Manning’s exhibition there is a similar initial impact that this is a brilliant installation. He is correct in stating that this is one of his best and strongest shows to date. It was significant that I was familiar with the work of only one of the five artists, Linda Leslie Brown, another colleague whom I have shown in one person and group exhibitions.
As the title states “Abstracting Thoughts” this is a selection of non objective works including paintings, digital prints and sculpture. It was wonderful to see how it settled into the space. Manning moves us through the small gallery quite marvelously. Upon entry we are immediate confronted by a panel, “Circular,” by Peter Harris, a large, abstract C Print mounted on aluminum. Against a mostly black ground are restrained elements of color and texture. The overall mood is subtle and absorbing. There is a glossy finish to the surface which runs to the edge with no frame. It floats a bit off the wall and just shimmers in space. A gorgeous piece. ...
Peter Harris: Lush
KidderSmith Gallery
Boston, MA
...photographer Peter Harris loves to experiment with how light and color affect the eye. In this show at Kidder Smith Gallery, Harris uses theatrical lighting, backlighting and virtuosity with his chemicals during the development process to create breathtaking tones.
It’s hard to tell,at first, that Harris’s subject is usually the surface of a cardboard box, shot up close and blown up to giant proportions. “Yellow/Blue Stripe” uses lighting to play up the Cardboard’s corrugation in in pulsating lemon yellow and cobalt blue. This is no box , of course; this is an abstract color photograph, bold and compelling. As with Moore’s (David Moore see www.lessismoore.com) arc’s and twists, it’s Harris’s imperfections that soften the image and intrigue the viewer. The lines ripple, swell, and tear. At one point the torn cardboard blurs the lines away.
“Indigo” takes off from the endless night sky, rather than from a cardboard box. There are no stars in this series of three photo’s; they simply show deep, electric blue unfolding from shrouds of black. Just that color might be enough, but if you get up close, texture winks out at you. It’s the film’s grain, and it adds a soft buzz to the deep serenity of the tones.
Again and again in this show, Harris parades out eye candy with his color and scale - then reveals something much more nourishing in his nuances of texture and form.