Juxtapoz Magazine – Paintings from Lotus Land: Marion Peck @ NANZUKA, Tokyo

NANZUKA is pleased to present “Paintings from Lotus Land,” an exhibition of operates by American artist Marion Peck who life and performs in Portland, Usa. The exhibition marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in Japan.

Marion Peck was born in Manila, the Philippines while her relatives was on a journey. She grew up in Seattle, and gained a BFA from the Rhode Island College of Style in 1985. Subsequently, she studied in two MFA plans at Syracuse University in New York and Temple College in Rome. Due to the fact holding her to start with solo exhibition in 1990 at the Marianne Partlow Gallery in Olympia, Washington, Peck has offered her work internationally in various areas together with San Francisco, New York, Rome, and Paris.

Peck invites viewers to undertaking into unsettling and mysterious narratives via her fastidious oil paintings that seemingly carry to intellect the zeitgeist of the spiritual paintings of the Northern Renaissance period. People that appear in the worlds that unfold in her perform are anthropomorphic animals and animalized human beings, when various flora and fauna are often rendered in unrealistic scales. On shut observation it is probable to detect various gimmicks that provide to tickle our curiosity as achieved by way of the refined peculiarities of the subject’s facial expressions, and the mix of points that appear to be out of position with a single an additional. In fact, Peck’s paintings, which are executed in miniscule scale, lures viewers into otherworldly realms with its sense of magic produced by suggests of an beautiful stability among a certain approachableness reminiscent of a children’s e book and feeling of perilous uncertainty that keeps us at bay.

Peck’s very long-time companion and renowned artist Mark Ryden is also an particularly significant presence in the context of speaking about her work, as he too is regarded as a key advocator of the Pop Surrealist art movement. Mark Ryden is a giant, who by way of his outstanding painterly expertise and electric power paired with sheer degree of perfection, had managed to elevate his personal fashion to utmost sophistication. With his do the job, he experienced succeeded in breaking down the walls of the art field so as to allow so-named Lowbrow artwork to be commonly acknowledged and appreciated. Maybe masked in the shadows of Ryden’s fame, right up until now there experienced not been several options to talk about the unique artistic traits of Peck’s work on your own. Nevertheless, Peck’s presence is hugely significant even in contemplating the feasible influences she experienced on Ryden as an artist who experienced marked an earlier debut, or their confluent marriage in enriching each and every other’s operate. What is extra, in revisiting Peck’s artistic endeavors by means of this in depth showcasing of her contemporary and present-day will work, viewers will certainly obtain that there are some highly important factors that are not noticed in her partner Ryden’s get the job done.

“Lotus Land,” as found in the title of this exhibition, derives from a parable in ancient Greek mythology. Though in Japanese it is normally just translated to Togenkyo (“The Peach Blossom Land” –an ethereal utopia exactly where the persons direct an ideal existence in harmony with nature), the “Lotus-eater” in Homer’s “Odyssey” is portrayed as a presence that serves to symbolize a much more intricate and didactic message.

The exhibition will function a choice of 20 or so new paintings and drawing operates. Viewers are invited to choose this possibility to check out the entire world of Peck’s get the job done, whilst drawing references to keywords and phrases these as “the facial expressions of its people (people today, plants, and animals)” as effectively as “the result of the tales explained to.”