Richard Galpin: Tetratopia

British artist Richard Galpin has mastered the craft of turning one landscape into another. His distinctive works, which he calls "peeled photographs," begin as large-scale color shots Galpin has taken of city scenes. Then, scalpel in hand, he begins the painstaking process of scraping away the top layer of the photo. He cuts geometric shapes just deep enough into the surface of the photos to pull the color part back and leave white space where the color layer had been. After slicing up the photos (which are very good in their own right), Galpin is left with grand, sprawling, interconnected chains and webs of color boxes surrounded by vast white space. Some of Galpin's works contain shapes and patterns that are easily recognizable as buildings, roller coasters, and streets. Others, however, are radically different from the original photos; they only have snippets of colors and shapes to hint at what the image once was. Also on display is Margaret Pezalla-Granlund's installation "Fallen Over the Horizon, or Crash at the Putney Velodrome."
June 6-July 26, 2008