I first saw Peter Shear’s work in 2017 at Devening Projects in Chicago and have been following him ever since. A longtime resident of Bloomington, Indiana, he is a self-taught abstract painter working in oil on modestly sized canvases or panels. The largest I know of is the recent “Leverage” (2022), which measures 28 by 30 inches and is included, along with 33 other paintings, in Peter Shear: Following the Sea, his first exhibition at Cheim & Read (March 23-May 13, 2023). While the number of works might suggest that the exhibition is about reliable production and reproduction, that is not the case with Shear, who refuses to develop a signature style, motif or subject. As the poet Robert Kelly wrote, “style is death”.
Shear is what literary critic Harold Bloom would call a “late comer” to abstraction. However, he does not struggle for originality or pessimistically proclaim the end of abstraction. Rather, the position he has both defined and developed in his work is one that accepts, contemplates, and reimagines the possibilities of abstract painting in this backward state – of working in a situation where innovation and originality are not considered goals, where great work can empty a work of art of meaning. How do we stay open and free when everything we do has already been done?
Shear evoked landscapes, depicted figurative and iconic forms that resist identification, and varied his palette from paint to paint. Apart from the scale and his interest in the emotive physicality of oil painting, it is impossible to characterize his work. In this respect he shares something with Thomas Nozkowski, who put forward the idea that a painter was free to paint anything, and made no claim to the importance of his subject. Shear’s paintings remind me of something Nozkowski told me in 2010 in The Brooklyn Train:
This is the golden age of art. Not only do we have permission to paint whatever we like, but we also have an audience that is interested in playing along with us, ready to try our ideas. In our studio life, we are not only free, we are significantly free. Make a mark on the canvas. You could say this brand is everything I want – no problem. The success or failure of the painting has now shifted from the subject to the strength and intelligence of the painter’s work.
Composed of simple forms, marks and brushstrokes, Shear’s paintings resist narrative description. Even when the title narrows the scope of our reading, as in “Turkish Pepper” (2020), I feel the work almost completely escapes language and naming. The flat abstract shape we see may be inspired by a Turkish pepper, but it’s the interplay of shape, background and color that grabs my attention. It’s the sharp, slightly diagonal slant of the stem, with the bulbous shape extending forward from the top. Shear created this shape with a loaded brush that dried out as he drew the stem. The image of the pepper seems to be the culmination of a single thoughtful gesture. As much as the painting alludes to the world of tangible things, it invites the viewer to see inside.
If one of the ways to understand what an artist is trying to accomplish is to discover patterns and recurrences, Shear’s paintings do not yield to this approach. An accumulation of marks that could be painted in a single session or over a period of time, and titles such as “Foundation” (2023), “Responsibility” (2021) and “Leverage” (2022), do not offer any clues to the work.
After going around the gallery several times and looking at each painting more than once, I started playing a game: what is my favorite painting and why. It’s something I often do when I look at works by Nozkowski, Raoul de Keyser or Robert Ryman, if only to highlight the works, to see them with heightened awareness. Shear does not seem to rework his canvases. It lays down ground, which can be flat, patchy, or brushy, or it leaves much of the surface raw. Its features can be thick, feathery or dry. He is interested in the changes of tones as well as the contrasts of light and dark. Painting drawing is at the heart of his practice.
While the process in “Turkish Pepper” is simple, the interplay of figure, background, color and brushstroke in “Truck” (2022) catches our attention differently due to the interplay of thin layers of paint, as the colors pop and shine. One of the problems with the “return to painting” movement that occurred in the 1980s was that many of its most famous practitioners adhered to the tradition of serious subject masterpieces and the idea that bigger is better. They used paint, but they weren’t particularly interested in paint as a material to explore. They upheld the more obvious achievements of abstract expressionism, such as post-easel painting and gesture, and turned them into empty clichés.
Although not as famous at the time, artists such as Nozkowski, de Keyser, Jim Nutt, Miyoko Ito, Brenda Goodman and Lois Dodd all followed a different trajectory. It is this desire for independence, coupled with a curiosity for the painting’s ability to be itself and more, that seems to be one of Shear’s strongest motivations. I love the proximity to paintings such as ‘Camden’ (2023) and ‘Cold Room’ (2022) which bring me by minimal means to something I can name without going through representation. In the ferocious modesty of these paintings burns an intelligence of steel.
Peter Shear: Following the Sea continues at Cheim & Read (547 West 25th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through May 13. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
