For Immediate Release:
February 11, 2008

Contact: Marivel Graham
Gallery Director
(956) 882-7097
Email: gallery@utb.edu


Art Gallery to Present Bradley R. Petersen’s Innovative Still Lifes
“Bradley R. Petersen Painting Exhibition”

Brownsville, TX – The Art Gallery in the Rusteberg Building is proud to present the paintings of Bradley R. Petersen, a University of Texas at Austin professor, to the valley. Petersen has an extensive list of national exhibition, displaying in various cities such as Chicago, Illinois, Roswell, New Mexico, and Athens, Georgia. Petersen has also been awarded various grants, which includes the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award in Painting, given by Mid-Americas Art Alliance.
Having nearly 40 years of experience in painting, Petersen’s show is sure to be a unique experience to all valley residents. His years of experience is clearly seen through his technical ability to produce extremely fine and beautiful paintings. His intriguing subject matter and stimulating color scheme invite you in to explore and absorb every inch of each painting. Petersen’s work is best described in his own words:
“My intention is to rework or sabotage the tradition of still life painting by bringing worlds of inanimate objects and humans together yet colliding with some sort of collage mentality behind the thinking that threatens their normality and intimacy.”
The show will be opening on February 19, 2008 at 6:30 PM. The last day to view the show will be March 6, 2008. General admission is $3.00. Student semester passes are available for $5.00. Admission for Patron of the Arts members is free. Please contact us at (956) 882-7097 for more information or please e-mail us at gallery@utb.edu.


Artist Statement:

Bradley R. Petersen


In my paintings, I compose disparate images of desire and repulsion in an attempt to politicize obviously nonpolitical things within still life arrangements. Pieces of pie have an element of decadence or political incorrectness and “good” food such as fruit or beautiful objects like flowers all struggle for their positions in the compositions. Meanwhile images such as snakes fall back into roles of both decoration and threat or maybe promises of pain or pleasure. At the same time humans are present or nearby as they interact in various coded ways but only by glimpses of body parts or clothing fragments. I paint all this iconography in an aesthetic atmosphere but restricted space, and color and light become performers as images take on visual pleasure. I also believe the paintings show an emotional climate that is both brooding and ominous. Conflict and opposition are the breeding ground for physical and psychological relationships in these paintings. My intention is to rework or sabotage the tradition of still life painting by bringing worlds of inanimate objects and humans together yet colliding with some sort of collage mentality behind the thinking that threatens their normality and intimacy. At the same time I want the feeling of a composite of images that creates a tableau which suggests that there is more invested meaning, like a subverted morality play, than the eye can perceive. I am more interested in a transformed reality rather than one that is an imitation of the world around us and at the same time being affected by culture, space and light.

I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin where I teach drawing and painting. I have had numerous solo exhibitions at Zaks Gallery Chicago, Illinois, and most recently I have shown at Parchman Stremmel Galleries, San Antonio, Texas; Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico; and Bill Davis Gallery, Austin, Texas. My work is included in the collections of the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, New, Mexico; Continental Bank, Chicago, Illinois; Kemper Insurance Company, Chicago, Illinois; and Wilson Industries, Houston, Texas,