Peter Walsh is an artist living in Brooklyn, New York.
He works in a variety of formats including painting, video installation, street performance, experimental film, writing and curating. All of his work is connected by an interest in public space, societal structures, the human body, economics, and urban life.
Over the past thirty years Walsh’s work and various public projects have been shown at venues in United States, Great Britain, Slovenia and Puerto Rico. Site specific projects have taken place in Central Park in Manhattan, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in Hyde Park in London, England, at the Unisphere in Queens, New York and at other locations.
Walsh was a co-founder and editorial board member of the Baltimore-based arts journal Link, which published ten book-length magazines between 1996 and 2006. In 2009 he was a Writing Live fellow as part of Performa, the New York City-based performance art festival. He has received a variety of grants and awards including one of the final National Endowment for the Arts artist fellowships in 1995.
b. 1962 - New York, New York, USA.
See below for a C.V. and an artist statement.
Artist Statement
I drink up the street. The shared, frightening, joyful, kaleidoscopic urban spaces of the twenty-first century still pack the punch of anonymous connection and contagion. That sense of walking delirium, shaped by history, social forms and the pressure of global economics, has gifted me with fractured multiplicity in my paintings. For me, cities provide a sharp break from the historical past, allowing the unexpected to realign human relations.
As a painter, I’m caught between the physicality of my working experiences and a commitment to intellectual clarity. I worked for years in various forms of precarious manual labor: stone masonry, grocery store clerking, house painting, clerical temping, groundskeeping, warehouse work, deli delivery and much more. Yet at the same time I also co-founded and edited an arts journal, curated multiple art exhibitions, and created sophisticated experimental films and video installations, all in the search for rigorous artistic expression. This is the dialectic edge I work with when I make marks with my hands.
A new studio and a return to oil painting have unleashed an imaginative world in my work. I’m committed to following the paint.
Curriculum Vitae (Selections)
Selected Solo Exhibitions and Projects
2010 - 2012 “Central Park Portrait Exchange,” Performance and Collaborative Drawing Project, Central Park, New York.
2004 “Plebiscite2004,” Performance in London, Queens and Manhattan, including Beaconsfield Arts Center, London.
2003 “Tongue:Jezik” with Deidre Hoguet, Street Performances and Gallery Exhibition, Center in Galerija P74, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Curator Tadej Pogačar.
2001 “Brick Man” performance at Broadway and Ann Street, NYC. Funded in part by the Artists Space/Independent Projects Grant Program.
1994 “Feeding Time at the Testosterone Tank,” 14 monitor video sculpture, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore, MD. Juror Felix Gonzales-Torres.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 South Brooklyn Salon, Thomas VanDyke Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2022 Waves: J&M Studio Exhibition, NARS Foundation Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2022 Re-Discoveries Exhibition, NARS Foundation Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2019 Exhibition, Space 766, Brooklyn, NY.
2014 Thirst Exhibition, Proteus Gowanus Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Curator Lydia Matthews.
2013 Protests: 6 Case Studies, P74 Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
2009-2014 “Portrait Drawing Round Robin,” Various sites including Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA, Creative Alliance, Baltimore, Maryland, City Without Walls, Newark, New Jersey, Trade School, Lower East Side, New York, Sculpture Center, Queens, New York.
2004 “Lampadedromia, Puerto Rico 2004,” Performance with Deidre Hoguet and Tadej Pogačar, Puerto Rico 04: Tribute to the Messenger Exhibition, San Juan and Rincon, Puerto Rico, Organized by Michy Marxuach for M&M Proyectos.
2003 Global Priority Exhibition, Herter Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Curators Grady Gerbracht and Susan Jahoda
2003 “Project Mercenaria mercenaria,” Performance as part of Float, Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC, Curator Sara Reisman.
2002 Artist-in-the Marketplace Exhibition, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NYC.
2002 Heart of Gold Exhibition, P.S.1/MOMA Contemporary Art Center, NYC, Curator Larissa Harris.
2001 “Celebration of the Reversal of the Directional Flow of the New Croton Aqueduct,” Performance as part of The Brewster Project, Brewster, NY, Curator Rachel Gugelberger.
2000 “Wall Street Crab Feast: A Participatory Performance Trafficking in Vernacular Culture,” 16 Beaver Group, NYC, Part of Exchange: An Evening of Performance, Curator Carrie Lambert.
1998 ARTSCAPE Annual, Maryland Art Place and Maryland Institute, College of Art, PRIZE WINNER, Jurors Gary Sangster and Olga Viso.
1996 Biennial '96, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE.
1995 Superbia/Options'95 exhibition, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC.
1992 Decoding Gender exhibition, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore, MD, Curator Robert Atkins.
1985 Paintings, Marble Bar, Baltimore, MD.
Selected Grants and Awards
2003 Slovenian Ministry of Culture, Residency and Exhibition.
2001 Artists Space, NYC, Independent Project Grant.
1998 Jury Prize Winner, ARTSCAPE Annual Baltimore, MD, Jurors Gary Sangster and Olga Viso.
1996, 1993, 1990 Maryland State Arts Council, Individual Artist Award.
1995 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Other Genres.
1988 Jury Prize Winner, 1989 Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Other Information
2009 Performa09 Writing Live Fellow, NYC.
2002 Artist-in-the Marketplace Participant, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NYC.
1994-2001 Co-Founder and Editorial Board Member, Link: A Critical Journal on the Arts in Baltimore and the World
Maryland Art Place Critics Workshop: 1994, 1993, 1990 as a Critic; 1994 and 1986 as an Artist.
b. 1962 - New York, New York, USA.