April 10, 2015

Denis Peterson breaks reality to bring you back to it

It might be hard to believe that the photos below are in fact paintings but they are. Denis Peterson was one of the first Photorealists to emerge in New York. He is widely acknowledged as the pioneer and primary architect of Hyperrealism, which was founded on the aesthetic principles of Photorealism. Peterson distinguished hyperrealism from photorealism by making meticulous changes to a work's depth of field, color, and composition in order to emphasize a socially conscious message about contemporary culture and politics.

Originally, his floor-to-ceiling sized paintings centered around a single figure, with his monochromatic subjects characteristically cropped to appear as enlarged black and white photographs. Later, he developed a diverse number of original painting series, such as multiple phone booths in New York City. Although not a professional photographer, he has relied on his own camera shots to maintain a consistency of composition and subject matter as reliable reference studies. Several years ago, Denis utilized photorealism as a visual medium through which to portray the unthinkable: genocides. As with his controversial painting series on homelessness, his work centered on the indefatigable human spirit rather than on political and economic crucibles.

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible." Arthur C. Clarke

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