The Victoria Miro Gallery presents new paintings by Peter Doig in his first solo exhibition in the UK since Blizzard seventy-seven at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1998.
Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994 and winner of the John Moores Foundation Prize the previous year, Peter Doig is known for his exploration of the formal and thematic possibilities of landscape. His experimental approach to surface, texture and colour makes him among the most inventive painters of his generation. His work often deals with subjects at the fringes of normality, peripheral or marginal sites, unnamed places where urban and natural worlds meet.
"People often say that my paintings remind them of particular scenes from films or certain passages from books, but I think it's a different thing altogether. There is something more primal about painting. In terms of my own paintings, there is something quite basic about them, which inevitably is to do with their materiality. They are totally non-linguistic. There is no textual support to what you are seeing. Often I am trying to create a "numbness." I am trying to create something that is questionable, something that is difficult if not impossible, to put into words."
Peter Doig, 2001, 20 Questions by Matthew Higgs in Peter Doig, Published by Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia.
Peter Doig has just exhibited alongside Laura Owens and Chris Oifli in a collaborative exhibition CAVEPAINTING at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and a solo exhibition recently toured the Power Plant, Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada. Further solo exhibitions include in 2000, Echo Lake, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA which toured to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami and St Louis Art Museum, St Louis; in 1999 Version, Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland; in 1998 Blizzard seventy-seven, Kunsthalle Nürnberg and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. Peter Doig was born in Scotland in 1959 and emigrated to Canada with his family in 1966 living in Quebec and Ontario, before returning to Britain in 1979. Doig studied at the Wimbledon School of Art (1979 - 80), St. Martin's School of Art (1980-1983) and Chelsea School of Art (1989-90). He was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1995 - 2000. Peter Doig lives and works in London.
Solo shows in 2002 for Doug Aitken, Inka Essenhigh, Chantal Joffe, Chris Ofili and Stephen Willats
The Victoria Miro Gallery has a strong reputation for championing new painting and this year's exhibition programme is predominantly dedicated to leading painters from the UK and America. Peter Doig's exhibition will be followed in the summer by an exhibition of new work by Chris Ofii. This is the first time Peter Doig and Chris Ofili have had solo shows in London since their respective exhibitions at the Whitechapel and Serpentine galleries in 1998. The Victoria Miro Gallery will also exhibit the British painter Chantal Joffe and the New York artist, Inka Essenhigh as well as new photographic work by Doug Aitken and work by the conceptual artist Stephen Willats.
