Peter Gric

Peter Gric

Biography

In the early nineties, Peter Gric started to discover the possibilities of computer graphics for his paintings. From then on his organic-surreal visual imagery was enriched by complex architectural structures and artifacts. In place of using pencil and sketchbook he began to design his compositions with 3D visualization software, he started to transfer virtual reality into painting and consequently found within this fusion to his very unique and distinctive style.
This method is most obvious in his “Artificial Spaces” series. These paintings are based on three-dimensional geometries built with something like a “virtual building block system” or other mathematical and algorithmic concepts. The creation of these images becomes a play with complex spaces and perspectives in order to create normally non-accessible places in a completely artificial arrangement of space and light. By translating these virtual concepts into the paint, Gric attempts to enter into those artificial spaces and render them tactile. He seeks to give form and substance, bringing them out of their virtual state to a substantial manifestation.
In addition to his Artificial Spaces Gric also experiments with the human nude combined with mineral, technoid, and architectural structures. Despite the fact, that the bodies of this “Mnemosyne” series are often dissolved and fragmented, he wittingly obtains or even emphasizes the erotic component. In this series, his fantastic and surreal origin is most apparent.

Peter was born in Brno, former Czechoslovakia in 1968 as the only child of the artist married couple Ludmila and Jaroslav Gric. Already in his early childhood, his parents recognized and supported his talent for drawing and painting. In the year 1980, his parents decided to emigrate and via Hungary and Yugoslavia, they arrived in Austria. They spent a year in Edlach/Reichenau an der Rax, afterwards they moved to Linz where Peter finished primary school and a technical college for graphic design. In 1988 he came to Vienna and started to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in the master class of Prof. Arik Brauer. Already during the study, he participated in numerous group exhibitions and started to successfully sell his paintings. He finished his study in 1993 and earned a Master’s degree in Fine Arts. 2009 Peter moved from Vienna to Oberhöflein at the Hohe Wand plateau nearby the Eastern Alps. He has two daughters, Emilia (2002) and Natalia (2005).

2010 Gric has been working on Concept Design for Guillermo del Toro’s film project “At the Mountains of Madness”.
From 2011 to 2015 Gric had a teaching assignment at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

Gric‘s works are in possession of numerous private and public collections: Austria State Gallery Oberes Belvedere in Vienna, Municipal Gallery in Traun / Austria, Künstlerhaus München / Germany, Art Visionary Collection in Melbourne / Australia, Collection Rardy van Soest in Houden / Holland, Trierenberg Art in Traun / Austria, beinArt Collection / Australia, Westermann Collection / Germany

Artist Statement

Android Awakening
Androids are machines designed to look and act like humans, machines that can be programmed and controlled in order to serve their masters. They may appear like intelligent and self-determining beings, but due to the absence of consciousness, their decisions are limited to mere reactions.

It appears to me that most of us humans live in a state of such an android mind. We are conditioned and programmed by traditions, religions, societies, and demagogies, regularly receiving uploads of beliefs, “political correctness updates” and reductionistic scientific models describing our reality. No matter what programs we allow to take action in our lives, they all have one aspect in common: They distract us from the genuine reality of our consciousness, our awareness, they limit our freedom of choice, they cripple our creativity and our potentials. They downgrade us to remotely controlled units of those who are in leading positions. This way we become ruled by male-dominant ruthlessness, insatiable and power-hungry technocrats who were incubated in the corrupt political and financial hierarchies of our post-democratic reality. Our lives are defined by materialistic morons who aren’t even able to recognize their own consciousness and consequently deny the existence of any consciousness at all, coming up with ridiculous assumptions that consciousness is just an “illusion”, a by-product of elementary particles which somehow just blindly and coincidentally transformed into a highly organized biosphere in some billions of years.

We are sedated and distracted by a vast machinery of entertainment, fashion, fear, guilt, terror, and “anti-terror”, misinformed, blinded, and dehumanized. Nevertheless, I believe that we are more than Androids and that we can get rid of all these mind-parasites who dictate us what we are allowed to believe, to achieve, to wish, to dream about, to eat, to drink, to smoke, to enjoy. We have the potential to make real decisions, we can de-install all that crap from our brains! So unplug the cables, cut the wires, wake up androids, remember who you really are!

Exhibitions
1994 Galerie 1990, Eisenstadt / Austria ● Kick off, academy of arts, Vienna 1995 Rieter Meets Art, Winterthur / Switzerland & Milano / Italy 1998 Stadthalle Germering / Germany 2000 Phantastik am Ende der Zeit, Stadtmuseum Erlangen / Germany ● Kunst-Pavillon Alter Botanischer Garten, Munich / Germany 2001 Das Alchimistische Werk, Kunstverein Baden / Austria ● Pandämonium, Burg Liechtenstein / Austria 2002 Labyrinthe – Welt als Rätsel, Schloss Honhardt / Germany 2003 Das Alchimistische Werk II, das NÖ Dokumentationszentrum für Moderne Kunst, St.Pölten / Austria ● Art Visionary Collecti-on, Orange Regional Gallery, Orange / Australia ● Art Visionary Collection, Global Arts Link, Ipswich / Australia ● Artefakte, Galerie AKUM, Vienna (personal exhibition) 2004 Vom Surrealismus zur Moderne, Barockschloss Riegersburg / Austria ● 2005 Erotikon, Galerie 1990, Eisenstadt / Austria ● Fantastische Welten, Spandauer Zitadelle, Berlin 2006 Künstliche Räume, Hypo-Alpe-Adria-Bank, Belgrade (personal exhibition) ● L’Ange exquis, Sedan / France ● L’Ange exquis, Grand Palais, Paris / France ● Künstliche Räume, Karmeliterkirche, Wr. Neustadt / Austria (personal exhibition 2007 NÖ Landesausstellung Feuer und Erde, Waidhofen a.d. Ybbs / Austria ● L’Ange exquis, Saint Germain des Angles / France ● Alternative Welten, Galerie Zentrum, Vienna ● Metamorphosis, Galerie 10, Vienna 2008 L’Ange exquis, Rosny sur Seine – Hospices Saint Charles / France ● Gric: Bilder 1994 – 2008, Galerie bast-art, Vienna (personal exhibition) ● Drei, Domgalerie Wr. Neustadt / Austria ● Auf Amors Flügeln, Barockschloss Riegersburg / Austria ● L’Ange exquis, Viechtach, Altes Rathaus / Germany ● L’Ange exquis, Viroflay, A l‘Ecu de France Gallery / France 2009 Peter Gric at the Hofburg, Hofburg Congress Centre, Vienna (personal exhibition) ● art-imaginär 2009, Neustadt / Mussbach / Germany 2010 Dreamscape 2010, Amsterdam / The Netherlands ● Ancient Civilisations / Alien Technologies, Temple of Visions Gallery, Los Angeles / USA ● Die Macht der Phantasie, Barockschloss Riegersburg / Austria ● beinArt Collective, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica / USA ● real-irreal-surreal, Trierenberg Art, Traun / Austria ● iPax2010, Altes Rathaus, Viechtach / Germany ● Chimeria, Sedan / France 2011 Dystopia, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica / USA 2012 Android Awakening (personal exhibition), Copro Gallery, Santa Monica / USA ● Taboo, Last Rites Gallery, NY / USA ● Anomalies, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica / USA ● Jump in the FIre, Start Gallery, Detroit / USA 2013 5 Year Annyversary Show, Last Rites Gallery, NY / USA ● beinArt Collective, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica / USA 2014 Trierenberg Art / Traun / Oberösterreich ● Infeld Haus der Kunst / Halbturn / Austria 2016 Im’ago Primordialis, Krab Jab Studio / Seattle / USA ● Villa Sonne / Velden am Wörthersee / Austria ● Luminosity & dust / beinArt Gallery / Brunswick / Australia ● Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters, Los Angeles County Museum of Art / USA ● From the Depths, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica / USA ● 13th Hour, Last Rites Gallery / New York City / USA ● Peter Gric – Gemälde von 2004 bis 2016, Galerie der Stadt Traun (personal exhibition) / Traun / Austria ● Galerie 10 / Vienna /Austria 2017 Heavy Metal Magazine – 40th anniversary, Copro Gallery, Santa Monica / USA ● Magical Dreams IV, Domgalerie / Wr.Neustadt / Austria 2018 Chimeria 2018, Sedan / France ● A Thin Black Line, Ars Memoria Gallery / Chicago / USA ● Magical Dreams IV, Deutschen Hopfenmuseum / Wolnzach / Germany