Last chance: Peter Doig

In The Brooklyn Rail, Greg Lindquist looks at Peter Doig’s new large-scale paintings, which are up until tomorrow at Gavin Brown and Michael Werner.

“While Doig�s current work reflects his recent relocation to Trinidad and the unaccustomed imagery this has inspired, the paintings lack material presence. The canvases in these galleries are murky, thin (the surfaces almost appear stained) and compositionally flat, leaving a feeling of aesthetic (as well as geographical) estrangement from his prior brightly chromatic, lush, multilayered, dripped and splattered canvases. Doig recently commented on this shift, ‘I think it was just an attempt to escape mannerism�the things people liked about those paintings were the surfaces� and I wanted to break that formula. I also just wanted to explore.’ This work by contrast reads often as underpaintings, lacking the material engagement of Doig�s previous efforts or of Bonnard�s Met show.”

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“Peter Doig: New Paintings,” Gavin Brown Enterprises and Michael Werner Gallery, New York, NY. Through March 14.