Friday, May 10, 2024

Artist of the Day, May 10, 2024: Jamaal Peterman, an emerging American painter (#2020)

Jamaal Peterman (1990) is an American painter whose work engages the formal strategies of abstraction to address the representation of bodies—particularly Black bodies—within urban landscapes.

"I’m thinking about class, wealth, proximity of Black wealth in certain environments,” Peterman says, “and using lines, shapes, colorant icons and symbols to break down various codes and ways you move throughout the community."

Peterman uses various textures and pared down forms to evoke a world in which Black bodies are reduced and flattened amid monolithic systems and structures. Bright, luminous colors lend the work a childlike simplicity and joy, while the imagery itself is highly unsettling, suggesting an entire visual culture based on an elaborate game.

Though fundamentally abstract and symbolic, Peterman’s visual language represents a decoding of actual realities in contemporary culture. Viewers perceive the people in Peterman’s compositions as absent of humanity, reduced to flattened fields of color; meanwhile, impenetrable structures surround these flattened bodies amid landscapes dominated by networks of interconnected, impenetrable, empty facades.

Peterman earned a BFA from University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and an MFA from Pratt Institute. Recent exhibitions include Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, Michigan. His work has been featured twice in New American Painting. Recent residencies include MASS MoCA Residency; Wassaic Project Residency, and Fountainhead Residency.

© 2024. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Jamaal Peterman or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Jamaal Peterman
Fresh out the Bag, 2015
 Le Bur, 2015
 Luck 7, 2015
Gladiator, 2016
Ms. Love, 2016
Prada, 2016
Red October, 2016
Panel 61, 2017
  Get Your Money Black Man, 2018
Gucci Fly, 2018
 Money Bag, 2018
Super Fly, 2018
V McKinley, 2018
Beat Your Feet, 2019
Hurricane, 2019
In Plain Sight, 2019
Kill The Best, 2019
Lemon Grass, 2019
One small step, 2019
Rite of Passage, 2019
Still Praying, 2019
Black male Light blue shirt Orange pants Locks gold teeth, 2020
Black woman Pink shirt Purple dress blue Curls , 2020
Black woman Pink shirt Red pants, Ponytail, 2020
Puts and Calls, 2020
 Wade in the water, 2020
Black flag, 2021
Train Up, 2021
Walk Tall, 2021
Walking through another experiment, 2021

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