Walter Wickiser Gallery is proud to announce an exhibition by Peter Charles, Prayers for Peace, from November 2nd to November 26th, 2013.

Peter Charles is an established and accomplished artist living and working in Washington, DC, who has exhibited in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Charles‘ idiosyncratic aesthetic and powerful graphic sensibility dominates this sampling of work in a solo exhibition from the recent past through the present. Here are Charles’ unique bi-folding screens, oils on shaped steel and folded mixed media works.

His exhibition at the Walter Wickiser Gallery in New York’s Chelsea art district presents a common thread: a synergism between two and three dimensions. “That’s my preoccupation. I don’t consider myself only asculptor. I continue to paint or do mixed media or drawing. Everything is integrated that way, always intermixed,” he says. Peter Charles’ art school training in painting and sculpture reflects his single minded interest in this dual approach. Charles is both a painter and a sculptor. His folding screens reflect his interest in a form long used in Eastern art, which he uses to give dimension to his paintings. Pinned to the wall his colorful mixed media works on heavy folded paper, cascade accordion-like, down the wall taking on a tangible physical presence. His wall mounted steel sculptures grew out of his awareness of early American toll ware. These traylike forms are made from large sheets of steel that are cut then folded and welded, on which he meticulously paints his subjects. The refined language of collaged images and patterns that Charles has evolved over time draws on a rich visual experience, various cultural roots and art historical references. The push-pull of disparate elements within each piece; geometric/organic, natural/man-made, raw/ polished, are united in the finished art works.

A Washington, DC native, Peter Charles grew up with a unique experience as one of two head pages in the U.S. Senate. He graduated from the U.S. Capitol Page School before attending the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received his BFA and later a MFA degree in sculpture from Yale University. He is a Professor of Art at Georgetown University. Charles has exhibited of his work in museums and galleries throughout the United States including: the Phillips Collection and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY, the Huntington Museum, Huntington, WV and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston Salem, NC. He also received a Visual Arts Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts.