Patrick Pettersson
I am an artist devoted to the exploration and a personal attempt to expand the expressive possibilities of painting. I believe painting has shown in current years a tremendous richness and freedom of expression, which keeps it very much alive as a contemporary medium in art. The medium’s history, and the varied dogmas to which it has been subjected in the past, serve to make painting a more complex undertaking than ever. Rather than being oppressive, this complexity is stimulating in a time such as ours, when one is encouraged to break all past rules, or follow them in strange and personal ways, as long as one taps into something exciting.
The subject matter of my recent work has to do with the idea of the Garden. Apart from the symbolic connotations it has, I consider the garden to be a spatial metaphor for a painting itself. Every year I spend time in natural locations in Mexico, especially in the jungles of Chiapas or the tropical mountains of Oaxaca, where I make many drawings, some of a botanical nature, and others having to do with what these particular places suggest to my imagination. These field exercises provide me with brute material from which I compose large – scale pictorial works. The large paintings consciously bring into play ideas of equilibrium, harmony and contrast, texture, and values in general having to do with the physical and abstract qualities of the medium. As should happen with a space turned into a garden, I take the wilder material I have, and try to balance it with ideas of inner beauty. The resulting paintings often transmit sensations, aesthetic and emotional, that I’ve felt during my walks, rather than depicting the places themselves. Nevertheless, I hope the work one sees offers the sense of being there, in a natural place at a very particular moment in time. I also tend to think that these sensations could not really be described other than through the specific works that embody them.
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Finally, another aspect of my recent work is the counterbalanced use of two or more very different techniques, or visual languages, in the same painting. I work the wooden surfaces of many of my paintings as a printmaker would, cutting part of the imagery directly into the painted wood. Other pieces have very detailed botanical drawings over colored linen that allude to 18th century studies of nature made by European artists/scientists traveling through the Americas. These graphic ways of depicting nature are contrasted with much more atmospheric passages in oil that bring Impressionism to mind. All of these techniques stem from different ways of filtering the observation of nature through memory and imagination. The paintings are directly related t my travels in natural settings where I often think of historical ways in which this type of activity affected the outcome of art.
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Patrick Pettersson (Pittsburgh, Pa. 1970) has a BFA from the University of Texas, at Austin, and an MFA from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He received a National Grant for Emerging Artists in Mexico (Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes) in 2000 – 2001. In 2007 he was awarded Mexico’s most prestigious juried art prize at the Bienal de Monterrey FEMSA.
His work has been exhibited in several of Mexico’s top public museums including Museo del Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Centro de las Artes Parque Fundidora, Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo, and Biblioteca Nacional José Vasconcelos. Internationally he has held solos shows at the Embassy of Mexico in Germany (Berlin) and the Institute of Mexico in Spain (Madrid). His work has travelled to museum exhibitions in Spain, Russia, Netherlands, Germany Singapore, and South Korea.
He has been invited as a guest artist at La Curtiduría Center for Contemporary Art (Oaxaca, Mexico) and at the Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts (St. Etienne, France) where his work was exhibited in 2008.
Nationality: Mexican
Residence: Mexico City, Mexico
Education
- 1999 – Digital – Image Courses, Parsons School of Design, New York.
- 1997 – Master in Visual Arts, Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, UNAM, Mexico.
- 1994 – Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Texas, at Austin
Selected Solo Exhibitions
- 2013 – Patrick Pettersson, Jennifer Kostuik Gallery, Vancouver Canada
- 2013 – miniretro, Polyforum Siqueiros, Mexico City
- 2012 – Flora Expandida, Drexel Gallery, Monterrey, Mexico
- 2012 – Flora Philosophica, Nina Menocal Gallery, Mexico City
- 2011 – Flora Philosophica, Quetzalli Gallery, Oaxaca, Mexico
- 2010 – Empire of Transformation, Institute of Mexico, Mexican Embassy in Spain, Madrid
- 2010 – Preliminary Worlds, Mercedes Urquijo Gallery, Madrid, Spain
- 2008 – Terza Natura, Drexel Gallery, Monterrey, Mexico.
- 2008 – Utopia and Bachannalia (Drawings), Ecole de Beaux Arts, St. Etienne, France
- 2006 – Constructive Universe, Museum of the City of Queretaro, Qrto. Mexico. 2006 Constructive Universe, Traeger & Pinto Contemporary Art, Mexico City
- 2004 – De Oaxaca al Leteo, Rodolfo Morales Foundation, Oaxaca, Mexico.
- 2004 – Noctámbula, Traeger & Pinto Contemporary Art, Mexico City
- 2000 – Vacationing on the Dalinian Plain, Alliançe Française, Mexico City.
Group Exhibitions
- 2011 – The Figuratives, Yvonamor Palix Art, Houston, Texas
- 2011 – Interconections: Contemporary Art in the Femsa Collection, Pinacoteca Diego Rivera, Xalapa, Mexico
- 2010 – Group Show, Espacio Valverde, Madrid, Spain
- 2009 – XX Anniversary, Jóvenes Creadores del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes José Vasconcelos, National Library, Mexico City.
- 2009 – Landscape Interventions, Seven Mexican Artists, Embassy of Mexico in Germany, Berlín
- 2009 – Landscape Interventions, Seven Mexican Artists, Contemporary Art Foundation, The Hague, Netherlands
- 2009 – CUADRO, Guide to Emerging Artists in Mexico, Estación Indianilla, Mexico City.
- 2009 – Object and Narration, Work from the FEMSA Contemporary Art Collection, Arocena Museum, Torreón, Mexico
- 2008 – Mexican Pavillion, I Biennal of Young Art, Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia
- 2007 – IIX Bienal Monterrey FEMSA, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City.
- 2007 – IIX Bienal Monterrey FEMSA, National Center for the Arts, Monterrey, Mexico.
- 2007 – Appropriate Appropriations, Six Mexican Artists curated by Yvonamor Palix, Art House, Houston, Tx.,
- 2006 – Contemporary Art of Mexico, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
- 2002 – Creación en Movimiento, National Center for the Arts, Mexico City.
- 2001 – IX Encuentro Nacional de Arte Joven, Aguascalientes City Museum of Art, Mexico.
Art Fairs
- 2013 Dallas Art Fair, Drexel Gallery, USA
- 2012 Miami Art Fair, Traeger & Pinto Contemporary Art, USA
- 2012 Houston Fine Art Fair, Drexel Gallery, USA
- 2010 México Arte Contemporáneo ZONA MACO, Espace d’Art Yvonamor Palix and Drexel Gallery, Mexico
- 2010 Hot Art Fair, Basel, Traeger & Pinto Contemporary Art, Switzerland
- 2008 México Arte Contemporáneo ZONA MACO, Espace d’Art Yvonamor Palix and Drexel Gallery, Mexico
- 2008 Hot Art Fair, Basel, Traeger & Pinto Contemporary Art, Switzerland
- 2005 México Arte Contemporáneo ZONA MACO, Espace d’Art Yvonamor Palix and Drexel Gallery, Mexico 2005 ARCO Madrid, Espace d’ Art Yvonamor Palix, Spain
Grants, Prizes, and Residencies
- 2012/’15 – Grant, Sistema Nacional de Creadores Artísicos, CONACULTA, Mexico
- 2008 Guest – Artist Residency, Ecole de Beaux Arts, St. Etienne, France
- 2008 Guest – Artist Residency, La Curtiduría, Center for Contemporary Art, Oaxaca, Mexico
- 2007 Prize for Two – Dimentional Work, VIII, Monterrey Biennale, FEMSA
- 2000 Grant, Jóvenes Creadores del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, CONACULTA, Mexico
Collections
- FEMSA Contemporary – Art Collection, Monterrey, Mexico.
- Arocena Museum, Torreón, Mexico.
- Multiple Private Collections in Mexico, the United States, and Spain.
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