Accident Report

April 26 – June 2nd

American Art Catalogues is pleased to announce Accident Report, the first monograph on American painter Peter Shear.

Developed in close collaboration with the artist, Accident Report is a beautifully illustrated 168-page volume collecting 130 paintings created between 2019 and 2022. Work is presented in careful chronological order, foregrounding its evolution, themes and variations.

Interrupting the unfolding flow of Shear’s paintings are self-contained sections collecting the work of other artists excised from his popular Instagram account.

Ordered as they appeared originally (by happenstance) and presented in grid format echoing the ubiquitous Instagram layout, these groupings function as both pictorial essay and visual artist statement, highlighting the work of others’ that informs and influences his own.

The book is dedicated to the late Matthew Wong.

As an extension of the book, a presentation of Shear’s paintings, selected by the artist, will be on display at 239 West Fourth Street from April 26 – June 2nd.

Peter Shear (b 1980. Beverly Farms, Massachusetts) is a self-taught painter known for his deeply-hued canvases created on an intimate, human scale. Elusive and spare in their presentation, his paintings hover in an interstitial space between abstraction and representation, often incorporating elements of both. They can suggest figures, landscapes, or architecture, or simply exist as spontaneous configurations of lines and colors.

Peter Shear currently lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana. His work has been exhibited in solo and two-person exhibitions at Clearing, New York (2024); Cheim & Reid, New York (2023); Castle, Los Angeles (2022); Fortnight Institute, New York (2021); KOKI Arts; Tokyo (2021).