Peter Cain

This pocket retrospective features the work of a painter whose career was cut short at age 37 by a cerebral hemorrhage. Cain emerged in the late 1980s as a sort of pop-cultural precisionist best-known for limning surreal renderings of automobiles in creamy passages of color. Based on ads and depicted in profile or head on, these vehicles were elided in such a way that, for example, the rear and front fenders of a race car were consolidated into a single form, balanced on one wheel. Similarly, he painted gas stations in which all semblance of signage was removed, leaving buildings and gas pumps as abstracted shapes stranded in settings evoking the eerie tone of Giorgio de Chirico’s empty plazas.  Another series of images featured the figure of his boyfriend lying on the beach, taking on the monumentality of a landscape. Cain’s enigmatic compositions used editing as a metaphor for loss while also foiling expectations of what a picture should be.