Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present Robin Peck’s second solo show with the gallery. Known for his philosophic relation to the medium of sculpture, and for his skilled use of subtle physicality, Peck uses basic forms and unexpected materials to inspire questions about space, time, memory, objects, and history.
These raw plaster sculptures bring to mind images of crystallized caverns, mined mountains, or ancient rituals. They are epic as a result of their restraint, as reduction of form brings us to the very end of legibility, a void into which we project new or old meanings. Peck explores the crystalline pyramid, formed by stacked cardboard boxes covered with plaster-impregnated cloth. Packages designed to come easily to the hand of the consumer, they are now salvage, haptic sculptural simulacra that are sublimations of his consumption.
“In Peck's oeuvre since the early 1970’s, the stepped form has been a periodic constant. His use of it now looks back not only over his own history, but further, to a time of epic, biblical architectural history, and beyond even that to the geologic time in which crystals are embedded. The regression is to something fundamental: distant but still vital precursors that can dwarf the present. As forms and images, we have lived with them our entire lives. These are Ur forms (those from which all others flow, irreducible, the beginnings of originality). We know them from Babel and Marduk, Giza and Saqqarah. They rise out of the sands of legend and imagination, a staple of movies and novels.” – Dion Kliner, ”Distance, Difference and Memory,” Exhibition Essay, 2010
Robin Peck is based in Fredericton, New Brunswick where he is an Associate Professor at Saint Thomas University. He received his MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and studied Art History at UBC. He has shown extensively nationally and internationally over the last 30 years, and is well known as a writer and curator. He is included in many public collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Recent solo exhibitions include the Contemporary Art Gallery (2007) and YBG in Fredericton (2009). Recent group exhibitions include Enacting Abstraction at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2009).
 
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