Peter Schuyff

Peter Schuyff creates paintings and woodcarvings featuring playful, surreal forms and figures often made of imagined and realistic components. (For example, in one series, brightly colored shapes are superimposed over a traditional portrait to a humorous effect.) In carving wood, a technique he developed in Papua New Guinea during the early 2000s, the artist whittles a found object, like a pencil, without looking at what he is doing. The resulting works are whimsical, corkscrew-like carvings that conjure associations with folk art. 

Schuyff has been the subject of solo exhibitions at numerous institutions including: the Deste Foundation in Athens, the Ulrich Museum in Wichita, and the University of Lethbridge Gallery in Alberta, Canada. His work has also been exhibited in notable group shows such the 2014 Whitney Biennial in New York and others at the Centre National d'art Contemporain in Grenoble, the New Museum in New York, and Drawing Center, also in New York.