Peter Charlap

Peter Charlap’s solo exhibition titled, “Recent Work,” at the Noho M55 Gallery brims with modern figures representing the middle and upper middle class life in America, which may have been accessible to many until just a few decades ago. In the psychological theater of his paintings, the figures follow the golden rule of moderation and restraint against excess or extremism; they hold a kind of emotional neutrality or centrality in relation to the world around them. The figures are observers as much as they are conscious actors moving about in the spacetime fabric. Are they able to retain their central emotional state because they belong to a well-off upper-middle class? Or have they achieved their socioeconomic success because of their refined character? How can we further unravel Charlap’s paintings?

 

Originally trained at Yale graduate school, Charlap is a masterful draftsman who bases his painting on drawing, as drawing is the key foundation for painting. Learning about Charlap’s process shows how much 21st century figuration has been infused with the use of technology. The artist executes part of the revisions digitally on a tablet so that he can map out the possibilities for the painting in progress with the option to undo or revert the changes, if necessary. A close acquaintance to the artist also stated that the artist partially relies on references from the internet, including the works of other artists, which has become a global village of sorts. 

 

Charlap’s style at times echoes the painterly-abstract and patterned style of his California-based peer, Mitchell Johnson, whom he may have heard of and whose New York Times advertisements he might have seen. James Castle is another influence, whose mastery of “enormous spaces” as exhibited in his small cardboard drawings inspired Charlap to create “Along” (2024). Charlap also studies historical figures, such as Jacobo Bassano (1510-1592), whose solemn portrait of dogs in the Louvre, titled, “Two Hounds” inspired Charlap’s color palette for the work, “Beyond” (2024). 

 

Charlap’s style could also be compared to Edward Hopper thematically and psychologically. Hopper’s work is more “realistically” or tightly painted and situated in a simulated “virtual space,” (as phrased by the art critic Mark Strand), where the characters find that the darker questions of life and human existence (such as death and mortality, or even isolation and loneliness) cannot be solved by the paradise of modernity. On the other hand, Charlap breaks down his forms more with the vocabulary of painterly abstraction and depicts strong-willed people who are energetic (almost industrious) and leisurely, comfortably at peace with oneself and the modern environment. 

 

On a side note, it should be said that Charlap has a fine taste for European and antique cars, which he occasionally collects, and cars are an important side element or situation in his vocabulary of painted objects, as seen in “Until” (2025).

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​Although the figures occupy the main swathes of space in the front composition of his paintings, the viewer’s eye can travel far back into the space perhaps due to the way Charlap distorts perspective, almost like a lens distortion effect in the camera (although it is not the same thing). The perspectival distortion, as seen in “Along” (2024), in which the viewer looks at both the feet and the heads of the picnickers, as well as the distant horizon in the rear, is achieved masterfully and naturally. In fact, the serpentine path through which our human eye travels within the composition of a representational painting makes Charlap’s perspectival distortion feel more real and immersive than a literal, realistic painting or photograph that may have a mundanely defined perspective system without any distortion and with straight perspective lines. But, upon a closer examination, it should be noted that the distortion of perspective and space in his work is not an accident of mathematics or lens design with a camera; it is rather a painterly construction that skillfully bridges the three opposing ends of space - below, up, and far. The layers by which space is constructed and converged give Charlap’s paintings great depth and space for the eye to travel within, despite their rather direct, unconventional, and collage-like arrangement of the people. A similar feat can be observed in “Aboard” (2023), in which the depth of the waters contribute to the depth of the painting, despite showing less of the distant space in the horizon.