Peter Gallo

Peter Gallo (b. 1959) was born in Rutland, Vermont and lives and works in Hyde Park, Vermont. He received his B.A. from Middlebury College, and his PhD in Art History at Concordia University in Montreal. His dissertation addressed the impact of medicalization and biopolitics on modern and contemporary artistic experience. Gallo worked as a case manager at a mental health center in rural Vermont for many years. He was a member of the Grass Roots Art and Community Efforts, and organized art workshops in day treatment centers and elder centers. He teaches courses in theory and art history at Champlain College, and St. Michaels College. His works draw from a wide variety of sources - art historical, political, and literary, often incorporating poetic, philosophical and found texts in his mixed-media paintings. He makes use of simple formal structures which emphasize the materiality of painting, regularly using the traditional medium of oil paint and combining both abstract and figurative elements. There is a clear performative aspect in his work. He cites Antonin Artaud as a significant influence, and sometimes deploys Artaudian scans of language, often appropriated, which he scrawls onto his works. Blood, desire, the cosmological, the sacred, and queerness are alluded to in his works in sometimes nearly abject ways. He has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe, most recently at Sean Horton Projects/Art Basel (2018), angelsbarcelona in Barcelona (2016), the Douglas Hyde Gallery at Trinity College in Dublin (2014) and Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London (2012). Gallo's work is in many important collections in USA, Europe and Japan. He is represented by Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London.