Quarters

Following his debut exhibition at PLG Singapore in 2014, Pearl Lam Galleries H Queen’s is pleased to present a solo exhibition by British artist Peter Peri. Peri develops painting, sculpture, and drawing as three distinct bodies of work. He uses this initial creative separation to provoke unexpected interrelations, attempting to open a space of empathic encounter between the audience and the objects displayed.

The exhibition title takes its inspiration from traditional astrological systems that chart the movement of the moon. Quarters refers to the four main phases of the moon: New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, and Third Quarter. These quarters are further divided into 28 lunar houses, which are individual segments of the ecliptic through which the Moon orbits around the Earth. Peri states his intention, “Quarters here refers both to the abstract act of division, which involves a certain violence, and also to quarters meaning a space where humans can dwell. The intersection of these two meanings interests me.”

Using a combination of marker pen and spray paint, the “House” paintings are structured into four sections with rhythmic bands that are determined by a set of processes that in each painting is specific to one of the 28 houses. The placement of each line is originally determined by the empty square in the centre, and the composition is completed by following a precise numeric formula applied to colour that results in an unearthly play of vibrancy and luminosity.

The three sculptures titled Level, La Paresseuse, and Pern Head are hollow forms made from welded plates of steel. They function ostensibly as fictional “viewers” standing freely in the centre of the exhibition space. These physically weighty objects appear as melancholy protagonists or in Peri’s words “stations holding the promise of interiority”—within an optically charged environment, consciously disorienting our vision between micro and macro levels.

Lastly, Peri’s drawings of complex circuitous structures most obviously inhabit the microscopic: in each, a single angular line, itself made up of thousands of fine pencil lines, is figured above a cuboid base. The viewers’ effort to trace its labyrinthine path from beginning to end involves a kind of slow looking that opens up a purely imagined space of movement.