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Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Thomas Eggerer.

In his fourth solo show at Petzel, the figure has undergone a dramatic shift in scale by moving from a once miniature representation to a life-size one. While drawing has always been a key component in Eggerer's painting, sumptuous color now plays a central role in relation to his drawing: the newly-enlarged figures are now embedded in expansive fields of color that have been poured, brushed, and scrubbed, effectively reversing the artist’s usual hierarchy of figure and ground.

Eggerer's enlarged and flattened-out spaces signal new complexities that arise in his narratives. The figures that populate these works are busy, yet they labor at tasks that remain rather mysterious. They are neither joyous nor tragic in effect, but are absorbed in their actions – as performative agents in landscapes with no clear-cut horizon lines, an ambivalent opacity allows questions to emerge about the indistinct boundary between both labor and leisure, and subject and object.

The exhibit will contain 11 new paintings and a full-color publication with a text by Devin Fore, who is an Associate Professor at Princeton University and a member of the editorial board of OCTOBER magazine.

Petzel Gallery is located at 456 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM. For press inquiries, please contact Janine Latham at janine@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.