Peter D. Gerakaris' Post-Pop Botanicals

Nature-Culture dynamics form the core of Gerakaris’ artistic niche. Having grown up immersed in the raw, natural beauty of Northern New Hampshire, it was not until attending a formative residency in industrial Beijing that he was struck with back-to-the-land nostalgia. Gerakaris expresses how he – like much of contemporary society – “suffers from Nature-Deficit Disorder”, and deploys a collage-like complexity in his painted works to represent “man’s fractured relationship with the environment.”  

A self-proclaimed “color junkie” with Nature as his muse, the artist turns his paintbrush toward forms of flora, fauna, and the cosmos. For instance, “Caravan (Owl)” – recently acquired for the National Museum of Wildlife Art Permanent Collection –draws inspiration from the artist’s fascination with the North American Barred Owl and its hypnotic call. The central figure suggests a mythological creature — a presence that has been summoned through a shamanic vision.

Other works appear as if they have been filtered – or even splintered –through an “urban kaleidoscope.” “Splinternet/La Fantasia,” one of six tondo paintings in the US Art in Embassies Permanent Collection in Libreville, Gabon (West Africa), is an amalgam of vignettes that spiral into an 8-foot phantasmagorical vision. Giant pollinators and shattered flowers explode into cosmic space, perhaps alluding to the gaudiness of our information saturated digital age. Origami sculptures, such as “Praiadise,” “Cova-Paul,” and “Garden of Cosmic Delights” extend this kaleidoscopic vision into 3D space as physical folding sculptures. The artist simultaneously regards these sculptures as architectural maquettes for pavilions to be realized on a grand scale.  Each hand-painted origami work unfolds into numerous configurations, having been exhibited at the Mykonos Biennale in Greece and the iSolAIR Program in the Cape Verde Islands (West Africa), while landing in the collections of William Lim, the Waskowmium, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 

 When peeling back the visually dense layers in Gerakaris’ work – which at first glace may seem mechanical – we observe an entirely hand-painted analog surface caressed with meticulous detail. Such attention to painting technique ironically draws us in to critically probe the dualities of Nature. For example, Gerakaris’ “Toxiganic Series,” which has been exhibited at venues such as the Bronx Museum and is featured in many private collections such as Beth Rudin DeWoody, explores beauty versus toxicity – a duality contained in toxic plants such as Ricinus and Lobelia. The ethos of poison mingling with perfume remains a common thread in other neon-hued bodies of work, such as “Rappaccini’s Origami Terrarium” – a large-scale, site -specific installation commissioned for Bergdorf Goodman’s Windows curated by Kyle DeWoody and Grey Area. The installation, visible to the crowds passing by Bergdorf’s 5th Avenue windows, showcased giant origami sculptures melding with 2D cutouts as a sort of baroque mirage. Rebecca Bates writes the following in Architectural Digest, “The ceiling, floor, and walls of Gerakaris’s window space buckle and fold like giant origami, every surface covered in bright prints and geometric shapes that feels equal part Pop Art and graffiti.”  Inspired by “Rappaccini’s Daughter," Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of seduction in a poisonous Renaissance garden, Gerakaris’ “Rappaccini (Chartreuse Muse) Tondo” challenges the viewer to disentangle a mysterious muse from her botanical surroundings – a muse who has become inextricably camouflaged within the poisonous garden which she is forced to tend. 

The garden itself has played a recurring role in Gerakaris’ work, both literally and figuratively. Mounting “Spectrumorphosis” at Wave Hill in 2007, this site-specific installation combined stained-translucent window paintings (offering a stained glass effect), with live plants and a large mural visible from within the gallery and the exterior garden. More recently, the artist was commissioned to create a site-specific installation for The Surrey Hotel’s Private Rooftop Garden, curated by ArtMuse founder Natasha Schlesinger as part of Frieze Week NY 2016. Highlighting the convergence of Nature and Culture by fusing the sky, Manhattan cityscape, and penthouse architecture, Gerakaris choreographed Floating Garden’s imagery in tandem with the landscape designer Rebecca Cole’s live plantings. The curatorial statement proposes, “a parallel between garden and artwork” both as, “artificial constructs engaging our imaginations.” Evoking a sort of Asian screen painting, the mural wraps the rooftop architecture, harmoniously merging art with site. Veiled within the artwork’s details are vanishing bee silhouettes – a poignant homage to the dwindling honeybee populations. 

Gerakaris’ most recent “Mask Series” explores the mask, while seeking to upend its traditional function. This series mines personal experiences from travel and residencies in China, Central America, the Caribbean, and West Africa. Looking to global influences, music, and iconography Gerakaris describes, “remixing these motifs like a Visual DJ.” He also suggests, “I want the Mask Series to invert the notion of a mask, so I try to wrap the inner psyche on an exterior meant to conceal.” Works like “Carnival Kriol Mask” and “Junkanoo Masquerade” – a permanent commission for the new Warwick Hotel Paradise Island (Bahamas) – blend seemingly disparate cultural icons. Tropical flora, fauna, and plumage adorn Afro-Caribbean symbols while riffing on some Picasso or Stuart Davis-esque tonalities. On the brink of dissonance, each mask somehow coheres into a single festive visage. Describing this approach, Gerakaris notes, “I aim to construct Global Masks for our era.” He muses how this approach mimics the “hypercoherence of our contemporary world. We live in a global society that is growing almost as wildly as nature itself.” 

Elements from the “Mask Series” were recently enlarged and rearranged into a 2,000 sq ft immersive mural installation called “Tropicália," commissioned by Cornell Tech for the campus groundbreaking on Roosevelt Island. Complete with an ambient soundtrack loop by composer Trevor Gureckis, viewers were invited to experience “Tropicália” and the Mask artworks through ChromaDepth 3D glasses – an optical enhancement that heightens one’s experience of color-space. In keeping with Gerakaris’ current enthusiasm for art that reaches as broad an audience as possible, he is currently developing a large-scale, permanent public artwork for PS101 in Brooklyn, awarded by the New York City Department Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program. In the artist’s own words, he is out to “tickle the retina and mind.”