Franklin Parrasch gallery is pleased to announce Peahead, our Fall 2014 opening exhibition, which includes works by Rita Ackermann, John Altoon, Cecily Brown, Kim Dorland, Jean Dubuffet, Jason Fox, Peter Saul, Joan Snyder, Michael Williams, and an early 20th century Chewa mask.

In the 1960s, when calling in to a favorite Los Angeles jazz radio station to make a request or critique the quality of the musical programming, Ken Price would use the alias “Peahead Pinecone". This moniker enabled Price’s free assertion of thoughts through an alternate self or fantasy identity, and served as a spoof-like cover for humor and rebellious expression.

In the spirit of this Pricean prank, the artists in Peahead fantastically reject limitations that typically reflect societies’ normative expectations. As they seek out alternative means of figurative expression, means which mindfully omit visual vestiges of infrastructure and the material world, each of these artists reference experiences of spirituality and otherworldly awareness and ask the viewer to perceive the figure in a world of its own invention. The subjects of these artworks expend beyond the physical, and ultimately realize detachment from the corporeal world as they ride the cusp between conscious and subconscious ecstasy.