Brooklyn-based artist Jamaal Peterman is the focus of a solo exhibition called “Grunch in Bed” at James Fuentes gallery in New York City. Peterman works in various media including painting, installation, and sculpture that highlight the proximity of Black and Brown bodies throughout Western history. He is best known for his abstract-meets-figurative paintings that portray realist figurations alongside colorful geometric impositions that recall socio-political issues such as the separation of classes reinforced by commodities and wealth.
For his latest presentation, Peterman navigates simulated realities. “Peterman’s dazzling geometric abstraction illuminates an “absolute reality” in which color and form communicate hierarchies of space and movement as well as class and race,” said the gallery in a statement. “Central to Peterman’s landscape work is the artist’s reflection on how black and brown bodies navigate through urban space. Shades of black and brown encode certain elements in the paintings as representative of black bodies, communities, businesses, and ecosystems. “
The title of the show references R. Buckminister Fuller’s modern allegory Grunch of Giants (1983) in which Fuller writes about the deliberate dismantling of the middles class, the unsustainable dominance of fossil fuels, mass consumption, and other crises that affect humanity. In the book, he “argues that humanity would be better off imagining its future beyond the unsustainable limitations and domination of the Gross Universal Cash Heist (GRUNCH) that we find ourselves within.”
