Peres Projects is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition with American artist Blair Thurman (b. 1961, US). Thurman’s paintings and neon works engage with diverse facets of personal narrative, tribal motifs, and American automobile culture. In his paintings, Thurman employs bold hues on canvas, which reference the stickers used on Hot Wheels and slot cars, stretched over cutout and shaped wooden forms. These large-scale works negotiate intimately autobiographical traits with formality, as they recall the artist’s childhood fascinations with these toys, while confronting and pushing forward the boundaries and possibilities of formal painting. The neon works reference the sticker decals of model toy cars, radiating with an imaginative spirit and lust for speed and midnight drag racing. These glowing reliefs behave like electrified negatives of his paintings, both highlighting and conceal elements of Thurman’s works on canvas to create new outlines and forms.

Blair Thurman was born in New Orleans in 1961, and lives and works in New York. Selected exhibitions include “Bastard Kids of Drella,” Le Consortium, Dijon (1999, curated by Steven Parrino); “None of the Above,” Swiss Institute, New York (2004–05); “Bastard Creatures,” Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007); “Born to Be Wild,” Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2009, curated by Konrad Bitterli); “American Exuberance,” Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2011); “The Old, The New, The Different,” Kunsthalle Bern (2012); “Blair Thurman,” MAGASIN Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble (2014); and “Blair Thurman” at Gagosian Gallery, New York (2014 / 2015).