Gary Panter
General Atmosphere: Early Jimbo Drawings and Recent Work
October 8 – November 5, 2022
http://www.fredericksfreisergallery.com/exhibitions/gary-panter-drawings-1973-2019
http://www.fredericksfreisergallery.com/exhibitions/gary-panter-drawings-1973-2019
For solo presentations, Fredericks & Freiser’s booth with several colorful Gary Panter works was a standout. Hung on black walls covered with countless original white chalk drawings, this punk pioneer's cartoony paintings, like Seven Dead, 21 Missing (1988) shined.
FREDERICKS & FREISER (D17): GARY PANTER
Mr. Panter, a comic artist and designer of sets and props for “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” has created one of the fair’s livelier booths. In white chalk on walls painted black he drew hundreds of little characters and objects. Thereon hang a few of his vividly colorful paintings combining abstraction and scabrous cartoon imagery.
There are some very solid solo booths at Frieze New York — including Pace’s spotlight on Richard Tuttle, and Overduin & Co’s Math Bass showcase — but Gary Panter at Fredericks & Freiser is a cut above. (And I’m not just saying that because he was a recent Modern Painters cover star).
Panters’ vivid, B-movie-inspired canvases are hung against a massive chalk-drawing that the artist evidently completed in two days: A dense squiggle of pumpkin-headed freaks, dinosaurs, ghosts, piglets, and other oddities. It’s a mash-up of whimsy and horror — one of the largest canvases depicts a green-haired man with a noose around his neck, crying fat cartoon tears before being hung. In others words, a pretty accurate depiction of how many people in this tent will be feeling by the time Sunday rolls around.
