Chair with Aloe Plant, Bologna, Bag of Fruit and Paintbrushes, 2021, acrylic and textile paint on linen. 60 x 46 inches, 152 x 117 cm.
The Scintillating Messes of Pedro Pedro
At Pedro Pedro’s latest exhibition at The Hole in Tribeca, you’ll find eight new still life paintings overflowing with unexpected objects. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner—plus used cutlery, art supplies, medicine cabinet staples, and other odds and ends—are piled anarchically onto wooden surfaces, as if the artist just emptied his refrigerator, purse, and pockets onto the canvas. Pedro’s painted world is, in short, a neat-freak’s nightmare; cursed combinations abound.
And yet, mess has never looked more alluring. The satisfying graphic precision, electric color, and seemingly supple, organic texture of every form invite viewers into Pedro’s jumbled domestic universe and let us linger for a while.
Gazing upon Pedro’s imagined disorder, it will come as no surprise to viewers that the artist feels comfortable operating amidst clutter and chaos. When asked about relocating from New York to L.A., he’ll tell you, through laughter, about how he paid for the move with the settlement he received from a medical malpractice suit related to the loss of his testicle—the result of a brutally humiliating courtroom performance. He’ll also talk about the sunny California mornings he spends “stumbling” between his house and his garage studio, which he keeps filled with “cool trash,” and the springtime birds that swoop inside and startle him while he’s painting.