Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects presents No Nature, an exhibition of paintings by Peter Acheson (b. 1954) and Gandy Brodie (1924-1975). The two artists, separated by a generation, share an identity as trickster/artist. Both seem to work outside the dominant market-based modalities of the art world. Working in the context of both the city and country, their pieces are textured, with dynamic, layered surfaces.

Peter Acheson is a painter who works in Ghent, NY. He was born in Washington D.C. and grew up with artist Chris Martin. Acheson received a BFA from Yale in 1976, and came to note in the 1980s as part of a generation of abstract painters working in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Acheson generally employs a small format, which is part of his refusal of the grand scale of contemporary art. These smaller works are often hung together in relational “gangs.” His work has a conversational, almost diaristic, impulse engaging with his favorite artists (and musicians) in brushed script homages on his canvases. He collages found objects such as sea shells, feathers and blocks of wood to disrupt the surface. In recent years, Acheson’s work has been exhibited at The Novella Gallery and John Davis Gallery in Hudson, and in 2017 was the subject of two solo exhibitions in New York City.

The child of immigrant parents living in the Lower East Side, Gandy Brodie was a self-taught artist; a man who reinvented himself as dancer, painter, and teacher. Among his notable influences were Martha Graham, Hans Hofmann, and the works of Van Gogh and Paul Klee, which he studied during trips to the Museum of Modern Art. Brodie created his own definitive,dream-like style, conveying his singular interpretation of the world around him with thick, built-up accumulations of paint. His work has been displayed at the Jewish Museum and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, and influenced the likes of Bob Thompson. He was championed by art historian Meyer Schapiro, but has received little attention in the years after his death. In 2014, The Painting Center presented an exhibition of Brodie’s work accompanied by a catalog with support from the Hans and Maria Hoffman trust, and contributions from Jennifer Samet, James Welling, and William Tucker.

Peter Acheson and Gandy Brodie represent an ethos of invention and elusiveness. Their work is in conversation with their surroundings, whether that be the city, the country, the work of their contemporaries, or modern music. They demonstrate an exuberant refusal of traditional practice and form, living instead in worlds of their own creation, balancing abstraction with an iconography of pictorial symbols.